11/23/24
June 21, 2007
Yahoo Buys Rivals.Com: Yahoo has purchased Rivals.Com for an undisclosed sum that TechCrunch claims is $100 million. The college and prep sports site reportedly has 185,000 pay subscribers and served 74.7 million pageviews on the last National Signing Day. The company was formed in 2001 from the ashes of Rival Networks, a dot-com startup that burned through $75 million before its assets were sold in a forced liquidation.
Looks like Rivals.com will hang on: It will function as an independent unit in Yahoo Sports, a media site which attracts a monthly audience of 15 million visitors, according to audience measurement firm comScore Inc.
posted by gradys_kitchen at 11:43 AM on June 21, 2007
I'm sure that $75 million bought some wicked Herman Miller chairs for their offices, though.
posted by holden at 11:55 AM on June 21, 2007
So this doesn't involve Rivals.net then?
posted by squealy at 03:19 AM on June 22, 2007
Huh... I used to work at Rivals.com. And yeah, they had very nice Herman Miller chairs, solid wood cubicle walls, and posh two-floor offices in the heart of downtown Seattle. They did not at the time have a business plan, however, except for wasting money on the above luxuries, or things like paying Picabo Street $100k to be a rep for the company, whatever the hell that means. As I recall, two splinter groups formed: Rivals.com and Rivals.net, some going to Tennessee and some trying to make a go of it still in Seattle (there was a turf war on the code to run the site and the brand name itself), and it seems the former built up a subscriber base over these past few years- $2m a month is a steady source of income! I recall that as the end was near, and we all saw the writing on the wall, that the techie folk were pleading to turn on a subscription model and see if we could salvage things, but the clueless execs thought a pure-advertising model was the way to go. Well, guess they were wrong! I was there through the liquidation, as one of the two people (IT) who had the know-how to break down our server assets. Oddly, during the liquidation I was making 2x my salary for those weeks, which was even nicer than the severance checks we got. Ah, the joys of the dot-com era.
posted by hincandenza at 12:20 PM on June 22, 2007
there was a turf war on the code to run the site and the brand name itself And now you could write the whole thing as a modern West Side Story.
posted by yerfatma at 02:18 PM on June 22, 2007
"We're the...Code Cobras! Ssssss! Ssssss!"
posted by The_Black_Hand at 05:54 PM on June 22, 2007
When you're a tech, you're a tech all the way from you're server assets to you're last severence pay!
posted by THX-1138 at 06:14 PM on June 22, 2007
Picabo... I just paid a rep named Picabo... I have got WAY too much time on my hands. But I do want to thank yerfatma and TBH for the cues.
posted by THX-1138 at 06:17 PM on June 22, 2007
Good move on Yahoo if they keep the Rivals brand name intact. I could see them continuing to operate as separate entities with Rivals still feeding Yahoo Sports with content. Rivals would maintain its position as a prep & college news powerhouse while Yahoo would continue to feed the more casual fan with top headlines as opposed to dealing with complexity and headache of merging the two offerings. Sorry to bore everyone with my eBusiness insights but I was feeling like partying as if it where 1999.