Yahoo! to buy out Rivals

[PonyPride]

Yahoo Close To Acquiring Rivals.com; Price Could Reach Nine Figures
By Rafat Ali - Thu 12 Apr 2007 09:48 AM PST

You’re reading it here first: Yahoo is close to making its biggest sports acquisition after, well, the Broadcast.com deal: the college sports network Rivals.com, paidContent.org has learned. The price could reach around $100 million, which some we’ve spoken to say is overpriced, and that’s why the traditional sports media buyers are sitting out on this one. One exec involved in online sports acquisitions told us $50-75 million would be more realistic given a model that can—and has been—replicated and described the reaction to what Rivals was asking—$100 million—as “sticker shock.”

For comparison, FIM paid $60 million for Scout Media in September 2005.
The new acquisition would be a boost to Yahoo Sports, which has been looking for ways to catch up to the juggernaut of ESPN.com and the surge from FoxSports.com. It has an already-existing deal with Rivals.com for sharing sports content; Rivals also supplies content to USAToday.com, AOL Sports, SportingNews.com, MSNBC.com and SI.com.

Rivals.com, based in Brentwood, TN, was founded in 2001, from the ashes of then-Seattle-based Rival Networks. The Internet start-up burned through more than $75 million dollars in venture capital funding during the dotcom bust, and the assets were available through a forced liquidation. Interestingly, it was rumored then that Yahoo was looking at buying the assets of the company. A history of Rivals.com since then is here. CEO Shannon Terry made the list of SBJ’s Top 20 in Online Sports earlier this year.

[smu diamond m]

Man, google should buy and make it better. Yahoo is gonna mess it up, just like my DSL.

[Pony Fan]

Surely stallion is going to come in as the white night to buy Rivals......

[SMUtrojanFAN]

the white night

Sounds like an oxy moron to me. Stallion, the oxy moron.

[Ikus]

Man, google should buy and make it better. Yahoo is gonna mess it up, just like my DSL.

Agreed. I've never been impressed with Yahoo! Apparently they think of themselves as a media outlet of some kind, but to the best of my knowledge, the only story they've even tried to cover - ever - is whether Reggie Bush got extra benefits when he was at USC. They've been after that story for a couple of years now. Have they proven anything at all yet?
Sounds like a perfect match for Rivals, come to think of it.

[Stallion]

actually I'd say Rivals is on a big roll in projecting the success of 16-18 year olds. Reggie Bush, Vince Young, Kevin Durant, and Greg Oden rated at the top of their classes out of about hundreds of thousands of high school football and basketball players. Probably correctly picked Adrian Peterson No. 1 in 2004 too since without injuries he was the best athlete in college football last year. Odds are astronomical unless you admit they know a little about what they talking about.

[expony18]

stallion sometimes i wonder if you are on the inside with rivals, and keep throwing around all of your wisdom, trying to lure us into subscribing to rivals... if you are on the inside, you're doing a pretty good job of selling their services; if not, they should contact you asap

[FroggieFever]

actually I'd say Rivals is on a big roll in projecting the success of 16-18 year olds. Reggie Bush, Vince Young, Kevin Durant, and Greg Oden rated at the top of their classes out of about hundreds of thousands of high school football and basketball players. Probably correctly picked Adrian Peterson No. 1 in 2004 too since without injuries he was the best athlete in college football last year. Odds are astronomical unless you admit they know a little about what they talking about.

Yeah, but they also basically said "[deleted] LT."

[expony18]

actually I'd say Rivals is on a big roll in projecting the success of 16-18 year olds. Reggie Bush, Vince Young, Kevin Durant, and Greg Oden rated at the top of their classes out of about hundreds of thousands of high school football and basketball players. Probably correctly picked Adrian Peterson No. 1 in 2004 too since without injuries he was the best athlete in college football last year. Odds are astronomical unless you admit they know a little about what they talking about.

Yeah, but they also basically said "[deleted] LT."

i still say that...

[SMUFan]

actually I'd say Rivals is on a big roll in projecting the success of 16-18 year olds. Reggie Bush, Vince Young, Kevin Durant, and Greg Oden rated at the top of their classes out of about hundreds of thousands of high school football and basketball players....

Come on, how sharp do you have to be to look at those four freaks of nature and determine they're headed to college stardom? Hell, you and I can do that. Tell us how Rivals predicted Chris Bordano (or someone like him) was headed to an NFL career, and the argument will have a little more validity. If Rivals had been around then, I bet they would have said Wilt Chamberlain and Lew Alcindor were pretty good basketball players, and that John Elway had a nice throwing arm. That doesn't take the slightest shred of knowledge. Have them spot the guys whose names aren't in headlines since middle school and correctly project the future stars out of that group. Rivals sometimes guesses right, but that claim doesn't get much support when the evidence is based on Bush, Young, Durant and Oden.

[Stallion]

since NCAA Coaches can't comment on recruits until they sign who do you think created the buzz on these kids as 16-18 year olds that you are talking about? Rivals, Scout and other recruiting services. They had about a couple of hundred thousand kids to choose from-and they nailed it-picking them not just as great players but the greatest players in their class.

[Kiper]

And where do you think the recruiting service geeks got their information for the buzz "they" created? From talking to coaches and reporters who actually see the kids play. Are those services the reason the country was following O.J. Mayo around like he was Michael Jordan? No. People who watch the games identify a kid as a great player, and the services write about it. They see damn few of these guys in person - if any. They hear a guy's a stud, then they call him and get great insight like "I want to play for (School X) because of (Reason X)." They rarely tell you anything about a guy as a player other than his height and weight and 40 time.

[Stallion]

EXACTLY! I knew someone was going to say that. They get it from the Coaches who are the experts but can't publically comment. Therefore even if you ignore their analyst function-which I generally do-they still provide useful accurate information on the Top Recruits.

[ShanDtheMan]

You've chastised people a million times on this site who claim to have talked to a coach who likes one recruit or dislikes another. Yet if that same information gets routed through Saint Rivals Church, it's suddenly gospel?
It's all so clear now.