Listen up, (college) sports fans …

Posted June 20th, 2007 at 7:59 pm by Jimmy Pitaro, Yahoo! Sports

 6 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News

Whether you’re a Cameron Crazy, a die-hard Husky fan, or a lifelong Longhorn fan, Yahoo! has made a roster move that will have you cheering from the sidelines. Today, we announced an agreement to acquire Rivals.com, the leading online destination for college and high school athletic information.

Hands down, Rivals.com provides the best coverage of college and high school sports on the Web, maintaining more than 100 college-specific sites and posting hundreds of updates each day. It also satisfies high school fans by following games and news in more than 35 states.

Its editorial team tracks recruitment news, rankings, team and athlete updates — in short, everything you need to know about what’s happening on the most popular campuses. Rivals.com will perfectly complement Yahoo! Sports’ editorial coverage — the work of its 200 on-the-ground local writers, reporters, and publishers meshes well with what we’re doing at the national level.

Rivals.com is also known for being the place for college sports fans to chat and share information, stats, and photos. In fact, its message boards are among the most popular in sports, and an important part of the business.

To those loyal Rivals.com subscribers out there, rest assured that we don’t intend to alter the formula you love and trust. I understand what makes Rivals.com special, and that’s why I’m so pumped about today’s announcement. Rivals.com’s CEO Shannon Terry and I will team up to ensure the continued success and growth of the best college and high school sports site on the Web.

So stay tuned, sports fans — we’re working on a winning game plan for Rivals.com and Yahoo! Sports.

Oh, and by the way, for those of you wondering how our recent management changes will impact our media operations here in Santa Monica, this deal should give you an indication that we’re going full steam ahead.

Jimmy Pitaro
General Manager, Yahoo! Sports

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6 Comments Add your own

Shahid | June 21st, 2007 at 5:37 am

Another stupid move by management!

It’s not hard to see what is going on. It’s now getting to the point where Yahoo will make any acquisition it can. What is the development team at Yahoo actually doing? What has Yahoo created in the past few years that is valuable? How does rivals.com help revenues?

Again, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE sell this company where there is a management team that knows what they are doing. These meaningless and overpriced acquisitions will not solve Yahoo’s problems. Don’t you understand that, acquiring Rivals.com is just another example of what Yahoo has done wrong over the past 5 years.

Anon | June 21st, 2007 at 10:56 am

I disagreee Shahid! This IS a good move for Yahoo! Sports — Yahoo needs to move the college and high school crowds to its sites!!

Gamecock Fan | June 21st, 2007 at 2:12 pm

Shahid is obviously not very familar with Rivals. It’s a very strong and exceptionally fast growing company. This is a great move by Yahoo (and for Rivals too). Bigtime synergy in my opinion.

Shahid | June 22nd, 2007 at 8:42 am

I am very aware of Rivals.com. You are talking a small segment with few users. Yahoo has gone this route in the past. Yahoo has tried to collect small sites like this inorder to create a larger network. There in lies your problem, this goes right back into how Yahoo tends to spread itself far too thin. Yahoo needs to focus on its core strategies and what they are not doing effectively. Yahoo had a huge lead over Google a while back, now Google is worth approximately 4x Yahoo and continues to grow even faster. Think of it as Walmart vs. Kmart just a few decades back. Kmart’s lack of aggressive action and poor management destroyed the company and now Walmart is enormous. Kmart had the lead but their poor management destroyed their potential. You have to be innovative and you have to understand what you are doing. Yahoo is probably one of the most ineffective companies at capturing growth in their segment. Imagine having the lead in the internet as the internet emerged and imagine losing that so quickly because of several bad mistakes because of a simple lack of foresight. I am simply suggesting that Yahoo needs to sell this company to a much more intelligent group of people.

Brian Ussery | June 22nd, 2007 at 8:10 pm

Go UGA Bulldogs and Go Yahoo.com!

Hunter | July 9th, 2007 at 6:38 pm

Personally I think this is a great move and I hope that the people who have att (formerly sbc) yahoo dsl can get access to the site with their premium memberships.

The acquisition is great because college sports tracking is right behind the NFL IMO and i think that this well help increase yahoo sports since it is pretty pathetic.