The same thing happened in the dotcom bubble, early to mid 2000's.
About that time there was a massive influx of cash to websites because everyone knew that published, printed mags were going to be a thing of the past, websites were the future etc.
One of them was the "madfor..." brand which launched madformountainbiking, madforskiiing, madfor any-other-sport-you-can-think-of, the other was magicalia which included bikemagic (but there was also golfmagic, fishingmagic etc). All of it was private-equity owned corporations - often parent companies of other private-equity firms which in turn owned a start-up private-equity which was advised by a consultancy... It was all very much a circle of money, all of it aggressively getting at the e-commerce and e-publication market.
Naturally, most went under; the madfor brand died off completely, of magicalia I think the only remnant is bikemagic (no idea who owns it now). And actually what has happened (very slowly) is a resurgence of smaller, independent publications and websites because, as that radavist article mentions, you actually have to love what you're writing about to make it work; you can't test, review, write about and photograph bikes (and riders, races, events) and you can't understand the community that builds around these kind of things unless you are actually part of it.
