Comments on: Yahoo Close To Acquiring Rivals.com; Price Could Reach Nine Figures

By: Mike S

Mike S — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 02:00:58 +0000

Good luck to all the people at Rivals if this is true.

By: Tom Williams

Tom Williams — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 23:34:48 +0000

Do we allow paid advertisements or shilling on PaidContent.org comment boards? Chris Lee is Rivals' Vanderbilt publisher, so, um, take his comments with about 200-300 gains of salt :-)

By: Chris Lee

Chris Lee — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 16:37:58 +0000

The guys who now run Scout are the ones who went through the $75 mil before bankrupting Rivals the first time. The current owners of Rivals, who sold to Scout at that time, bought Rivals out of bankruptcy for a pittance, and have turned it into an incredibly-successful business model.

Comparing the two networks is apples-to-oranges; the two do a lot of the same things, but Scout covers pro sports while Rivals has made the decision to stick to college content exclusively. There is no comparison between the quality of the two networks. Rivals is much better in terms of its content and analysis, and is by far the better known of the two.

Honestly, I thought this day would come, but $100 mil seems cheap because there is a ton of room for growth, and their current customer base is very loyal. In a decade Rivals will be to college sports what ESPN is to the rest of the sports world. There's room for improvement, but they are incredibly business-savvy and extremely good at the core of what they do.

By: Scott Rogers

Scott Rogers — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 16:19:23 +0000

I think it's a good, albeit expensive play for Yahoo. It successfully gets them into college sports.

They will be arguing over the same traffic that FIM has with Scout, CBS has with CSTV and ESPN has with ESPN U. Nothing original here. No original content. Same demo, same content. Yawn.

So, what makes it work 100MM. The same stuff you can get with a staff of 5? Not.

By: John Winters

John Winters — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:09:53 +0000

ESPN does squat with fantasy, and Yahoo dominates all other players relative to fantast sports, including CBS, so not sure what your point is there. Obviously ESPN is the dominant brand within sports editorial content online, but this deal seems to make sense for yahoo given the fact that it would face a much more uphill climb for most professional sports leagues given the 9 or 10 figure deals that the network and/or cable operators have with the professional sports leagues. I think this is the right play for Yahoo.

By: Dave Iannone

Dave Iannone — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 06:03:15 +0000

That is a huge price tag and certainly does show that everyone is trying to 'catch up' with ESPN.com but how can they really? What media company does a better job of intertwining all of its properties, offline and online? Other than CBS with Fantasy and the Tourney, ESPN's powerhouse led by the broadcast brand is the thing that is impossible to catch. When you've got the power of ESPN driving your online product, you can buy all the high school and college sites you want, no one is going to 'catch' ESPN. Possibly ever.

By: Scott Rogers

Scott Rogers — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 05:35:38 +0000

Great Article…. and early, too.

Based on what's been going on lately… Scout for >10x revenue, and CBS dropping a reported 60x revenue on MaxPreps, something bears further investigation.

It's not college sports… that's been duplicated more than once.

It's High School Sports… and unfortunately for Yahoo, Rivals ain't got it.

By: Ashkan Karbasfrooshan

Ashkan Karbasfrooshan — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:29:41 +0000

Agree with Zach, especially when it comes to companies who lived through the bust first time around… though is it really a success when a co. raises $75M and exists for $100M?

By: Zach Coelius

Zach Coelius — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:17:57 +0000

Nice scoop. All the sudden I am getting the feeling that we are going to see quite a round of content consolidation. Now that the big media players are worried about the strategic implications more then the bottom line, a lot of properties could change hands.