Rivals.com operation

It does say something about the juice of this board that the head of Rivals felt the need to come here and clarify

 

I don't work in the Internet game, but I follow it pretty avidly. There's no doubt Rivals has taken some hits with the quick growth of 247, but that's not unexpected.

Everyone knew the old Rivals folks were going to make a splash when their non-compete clause ran out. They do a great job, have signed up some great journalists (yes, real journalists) and have a very nice infrastructure that is rapidly improving (as far as video, databases, etc.)

I would worry more about the Scout/FoxSports folks being the odd folks out if there's any fallout from 247's growth. Scout had a head start in a lot of markets when the team/recruiting sites started exploding a decade ago. But Rivals and now 247 have been the innovative/growth companies since then, while many of the Scout sites are clunky.

EDIT: One more comment: I do think there are some markets where Rivals bet on the wrong horse, so to speak, and is suffering because of it. This battle is going to be waged on a market-by-market basis as much as a national one.

 

About the only thing Scout has going for it is that some sites -- the Kansas site and the UNC site to name a couple -- have a large chunk of fans that have been going to their message boards for more than a decade. They can still get good traffic numbers on sites where people read the message boards out of habit, but they get their ass kicked content wise almost everywhere.

 

I'll say this: 247 is making everybody else step up their games. I know in my market, Fox is getting aggressive in headhunting for talent to try to win the market (and, in this business, I'm in a competitive market). If that reflects a national trend, then Scout will be fine. We see here that Rivals is regrouping after the initial hit. 247 is hard at it.

It's a competitive business to be in, one that newspapers need to pay attention to. There's a lot to learn, though not necessarily mimic, from one goes on here.

 

Rivals - 220,000 subs
247 - 30,000 subs (several of which have gotten comped for year 1 at Alabama, Kentucky, etc.)

Say what you want, but Rivals is still a long way ahead and I don't see how 247 can get anywhere close to 220,000 subs.

 

Of course, but you're comparing a company that is, what, barely a year old with one that basically created the industry from scratch.

Rivals is going to be fine, whether it's part of Yahoo or independent, but 247 is going to seriously challenge their growth at every step.

 

Did you stay at the Venetian?

Seriously, don't get too confident. I have no idea what's going on these days, but I was at the 2000 conference in Vegas, sat at the head table with Mike Shanahan, got an award and less than a year later was out on my butt when the whole operation was reorganized after the venture capital ran out and a bunch of people split for Scout.com. Doesn't sound too different than this new scenario. At the very least, I can understand the rumors.

 

Another thing, in this day and age, it is not unusual at all to get nothing but crickets chirping when you apply for a job.

In my experience, if you inquire/apply for a job via email or a website, you get a computer-generated response from about 40 percent of companies.

Nothing from most.

That's the way things are these days.

 

MGM Grand.

The tendency for promises to be made and not kept was actually a discussion point at the conference. But when even the most cynical of veteran publishers, who have been through nearly every change possible at Rivals.com, is optimistic about the direction the network is headed, it's a good sign.

There will be challenges. Wouldn't be a media company without one. But the point was that we're in a much better position than some people are trying to paint us as being in.

 

Absolutely. Every job opening has a laundry list of applicants.

I do wonder why the thread starter hasn't returned to the thread, including when some questions were asked of him in an attempt to better understand his situation and perhaps offer some guidance.

 

I'm a 27-plus year journalist/author who's been in and out of sports and wanted to get back in full-time.

I was the publisher of the Wisconsin high school site for Scout/FoxSports for about a year and made the mistake of also trying to tackle the Brewers site at same time, both of which were pretty much starting over from scratch.

I was freelancing then and had to pretty much take whatever full-time work came my way to help pay the bills and get 2 kids through college, so thus have been employed with company of weekly/bi-weekly publications for 2-plus years now doing mostly news and features and want desperately to get back into sports.

I loved doing the websites and I started this thread out of frustration from about 6 months of trying to get a response from Rivals folks. I have e-mailed or called Tom Bergeron, Dallas Jackson (the last and only person who got back to me in January), Carla Swank from preps staff, plus Derek Samson, Chad Carson and Greg Ladky and their general info link for prospective publishers.

I believe Rivals is a great product and would like to join that team as publisher of its Wisconsin preps site, which may be active but only because college site publishers push things from across the network to the Wis. high school site when it relates to state recruiting news. Nothing original has been done on that site for ages and stories, ads, rankings, etc. from 2007-09 haven't been changed. And I'd like to change that.

I responded to Eric Winter's personal e-mail to me and was waiting to hear back from him before contributing anymore to this thread. Still waiting by the way, although I'm sure the holiday means a lot of folks may not be available.

Anyway, just an old scribe who wants to get back into sports and do as much as possible with online journalism/social media tools before they all pass me by!

 

There's only a couple sites out there that aren't being run by anyone (like Nevada and BYU), almost all are under contract between Yahoo! and the publisher and you can't take over a site unless the contract is up.