But here’s the hot tip - we’re so serious about sport Yahoo!7 in Australia has put its money where its mouth is and has acquired OzTips.com, Australia’s largest online sports tipping website. For those unfamiliar with the Aussie obsession with ‘tipping’ it’s similar to an ‘office pool’. Aussies love to ‘tip’ sports games and have special leagues set up to do so – Oztips being one of the key online sites that people use to set up their league.

The acquisition of Oztips is pretty serious stuff because overnight we DOUBLED Yahoo!7’s sport audience and skyrocketed to rank number one publisher for sports sites in Australia in just one day!

In the agreement with NextGen.Net Pty Ltd Yahoo!7 will acquire 100% of OzTips AND their loyal and passionate audience, many of which are totally new to our network and set to become highly engaged with Yahoo!7.  The acquisition will build on our existing Sports site, securing our leadership position in the Australian online sports publishers category - and let’s face it – we’re serious, and we’re playing to win!

Want some more hot tips about just how serious we are about sport? The stats from recent Yahoo! Study shows:

• Tipping audiences are highly engaged and passionate about sport – known as the ‘uber fan,’ they spend about 14.1 hours a week on sports websites - seven times more than a casual sports fan!
• 93% of ‘uber fans’ go online while watching a game
• 56% are more likely to pay attention to ads on sports sites than other general websites

Our acquisition of OzTips will complete in July, and with Yahoo!7’s innovative direction, we’re ready to take tipping to the next level! Now that’s a serious, hot tip.

Kath Hamilton
Director of Audience, Yahoo!7