Dig­i­cel has an­nounced the im­me­di­ate clo­sure of its Caribbean-wide news plat­form Loop News and plans to wind down re­gion­al sports broad­cast­er Sports­Max by Au­gust 8th. The tele­coms gi­ant says the move marks a strate­gic piv­ot away from con­sumer-fac­ing con­tent to a greater fo­cus on en­ter­prise so­lu­tions and dig­i­tal ser­vices un­der its busi­ness arm.

In a state­ment is­sued Tues­day, Dig­i­cel said af­fect­ed staff had al­ready been in­formed and that tran­si­tion sup­port would be pro­vid­ed in line with lo­cal labour laws.

Loop News, launched in 2014, had built a rep­u­ta­tion as a pop­u­lar re­gion­al dig­i­tal news out­let. Sports­Max, found­ed in 2002, was home to a range of high-pro­file sport­ing con­tent and was in­stru­men­tal in the ca­reers of nu­mer­ous Caribbean broad­cast­ers.

The com­pa­ny says its new fo­cus will cen­tre on Trend Me­dia and the re­cent­ly ac­quired Symp­tai, al­low­ing it to of­fer an ex­pand­ed suite of ICT ser­vices in­clud­ing cloud, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, dig­i­tal ad­ver­tis­ing, and com­pli­ance.

Dig­i­cel thanked its au­di­ences and em­ploy­ees, ac­knowl­edg­ing the lega­cy of the two me­dia brands but stat­ing that the shift was nec­es­sary to cre­ate greater val­ue in its busi­ness of­fer­ings across the re­gion.