Paid Content is reporting that Yahoo! will buy college (and high school) Website, Rivals.com
For Yahoo, it’s a substantial investment in media at a time when the company’s every move is under a microscope. Yahoo Sports is part of SVP Scott Moore’s portfolio. He explained the acquisition in an interview Wednesday:
– Moore describes Rivals as “extremely complementary to Yahoo Sports,” filling a collegiate sports gap. (Yahoo has been licensing content from Rivals.) “It’s about investing in our media leadership…. We’re doubling down on the media businesses [within our company].” As for the price, while he wouldn’t discuss details, when asked about the belief in some parts that $100 million is too much, Moore replied, “That’s always a subjective judgment … You have to make certain assumptions about what the inherent underlying value of the asset is.”
– “From a business standpoint, they have a robust subscription business around their communities. We think that is highly leverage-able. They’ve really become vertical social networks.” Rivals has about 185,000 subscribers who pay $99.95 annually or $9.95 a month; most are annual subs. The company turned profitable in the past 12-18 months.
– Yahoo expects to boost Rivals’ traffic and subscribers once “Yahoo rocket fuel is applied” in terms of marketing. But Yahoo also expects Rivals to boost its own standings in the online sports world. When we first wrote about it, acquiring Rivals seemed like a way to push past ESPN. Moore says now: “Yahoo Sports passed ESPN two months ago and widened the gap in May.” He expect Rivals to increase that.
– Rivals already was moving into high school sports; Yahoo will push that expansion with an emphasis on user-generated content.
– Rivals.com relies on an extensive network of local publishers; due diligence on those contracts took considerable time but Moore said the distribution deals were assignable.
Once again, I feel like Terry Semel must have felt when Google bought DoubleClick. All I can say is, gulp, this affirms our strategy relative to H.S. Sports. (I made some key phrases bold in the above paragraphs becuase they point directly to the strategies we’re following).
Not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, but coming on July 15, the Colts will launch a version of our mycolts platform tailored for Indiana H.S. football.
Here’s a portion of a screen shot
The site will be built on the mycolts backbone, so it will have social network capabilities, but we’re going to limit these features at first and only allow the schools to add content. However, the site will be integrated with MyColts, so people who have profiles inside mycolts can become “friends” with their favorite high schools.
MyIndianafootball will launch with season preview content from each team, then each team in the state will get login rights so they can update content. We do dozens of youth football camps in the state already. We are also working with local media companies to cover games on radio and streaming Web video. We’re tied in with All State awards, All Star games, etc. High School football is a HUGE focus of our marketing efforts.
Maybe Yahoo! will buy us someday 
[...] Yahoo! sports get Rivals.com This is big news for Indiana Hoosiers followers, who like many other college sports fans rely on the information from Rivals to figure out which recruits are putting on the team uni.This is the original post from yesterday, but I got my tip through Pat Coyle’s blog today. http://www.patcoyle.net/2007/06/21/yahoo-to-buy-rivalscom/ [...]
[...] to Pat Coyle for writing about it today when he dropped this other little gem: MyIndianafootball will launch with season preview content [...]
Are Yahoo and Google buying everything out there global domination is in sight.They are just like snowballs the longer they roll the more they roll over and grow bigger increasing the effect.