MUMBAI: Statistician Nate Silver rose to prominence by accurately forecasting the results of the 2008 presidential election as an independent blogger and the 2012 presidency as a writer at The New York Times. But on Friday, Silver moved over to ESPN.

In the next couple months, Silver will be relaunching his website, FiveThirtyEight.com, as an ESPN backed publication. The new FiveThirtyEight will be a standalone website that uses a data to tell stories and make predictions on sports, politics, economics, culture, science, and technology, ESPN said in a statement. Silver will run the new site as editor-in-chief, overseeing a team of writers and editors.

ESPN took a similar approach back in 2010 when it launched Grantland, a website run by sports writer Bill Simmons that brings a long-form journalism approach to sports and culture. Silver will also serve as an occasional political analyst for ABC News which, like ESPN, is owned by The Walt Disney Company.