Lipscomb alums' national sports Website sold to Yahoo!
Janel Shoun |
Sports-loving alums build an empire
Rivals touted for bringing online communities together
Rivals.com: By the Numbers
|
CEO Shannon Terry, former Lipscomb Bison
|
Rivals.com, the go-to Website for hard-core college sports fans and professional sports writers and forecasters, is owned and operated by two prominent Lipscomb University alumni: CEO Shannon Terry (‘92), and Greg Gough, chief technology officer, (‘91).
MediaWeek.com, the online extension of MediaWeek magazine, reported that Yahoo! did not disclose terms of the deal, but sources placed the value of the transaction in the neighborhood of $100 million.
MediaWeek reporter Mike Shields described Rivals.com as “one of the more popular online communities catering to fans obsessed with the constant recruiting wars for college sports, while also boasting a robust high school sports section.”
A Yahoo! executive told MediaWeek that the Rivals brand will remain intact, though its likely that Yahoo! Sports content will be integrated into the site and its partners, and vice versa. “According to Scott Moore, Yahoo!’s senior vice president and head of news and information, the deal delivers a built in audience that Yahoo! Sports, which is continuously battling ESPN.com and other rivals for traffic supremacy on the Web, can build upon,” Shields reported for MediaWeek.
Sports-loving alums build an empire
“I was working with Greg doing software development, and I called him one afternoon and said, ‘I think I have an idea for a site that could get a little traffic and make a little money.’ So we got together and started a couple of unofficial college websites,” said Terry, a former Lipscomb basketball starter and co-captain who was recently named to Sports Business Journal’s “Forty Under 40” list of the most influential business leaders in sports under the age of 40.
From that seed of an idea sprouted a nationwide company that is highly respected for its detailed sports coverage and ability to hold loyal viewers. If you log onto Yahoo! and AOL websites to get your sports news, chances are you are running into some of the free content provided by Rivals. You can find some of the same general, nationally-focused content on the Rivals site for free.
But if you are a hard-core fan who longs for breaking news on coaching changes, recruiting information, in-depth player profiles, scouting news and depth chart changes, then a subscription to Rivals.com would be more your style. In-depth daily team coverage, coverage of the summer Nike Training Camps, the first on-line recruiting database, message boards and coverage of National Signing Day are just a few of the features Rivals.com provides its subscription users.
Rivals touted for bringing online communities together
Yahoo!, which entered into a syndication and licensing agreement with Rivals.com in April 2006, is looking to attract Rivals readers from the much sought-after 18-24 demographic, reported Chloe Albanesius in PC Mag.com, the online version of PC Magazine.
"College sports engagement is primarily driven by community, and adding Rivals.com to Yahoo! Sports creates tremendous opportunities for us to connect our sports fans with the right sports content at the right time," said James Pitaro, vice president and general manger of Yahoo! Sports, in a statement, according to PC Mag’s report.
- Rivals.com boasted around 160,000 subscribers;
- The network included 170 websites, fed by 350 reporters across the nation and 75 employees in the headquarters;
- Rivals.com posted 700 to 1,000 content items each day;
- The company was expected to make $22 million in sales for fiscal year 2005-06 and anticipated sales for 2007 were $30 million, Terry said; and
- Rivals.com experts and reporters were frequently sourced in major daily newspapers across the nation and appear regularly on ESPN and FoxSports.
Lipscomb will host A-Sun basketball tournaments in 2008 and 2009