How much would you pay for Rivals.com?

[Bob Cook]

How about $100 million?

http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-yahoo-close-to-acquiring-rivalscom-price-could-reach-nine-figures

(Saw this linked from Dan Shanoff's blog)

 

[SF_Express]

Very interesting story.

 

[SteveThePirate]

Should it happen, let's hope they funnel some money into writing lessons for the "reporters" on some of their team sites. I've seen 12-year-olds put stories together and use quotes better than some of the hacks on the one I see regularly. Oh, yeah, and maybe invest a little in objectivity training.

 

[Bubbler]

$0

 

[SF_Express]

Should it happen, let's hope they funnel some money into writing lessons for the "reporters" on some of their team sites. I've seen 12-year-olds put stories together and use quotes better than some of the hacks on the one I see regularly. Oh, yeah, and maybe invest a little in objectivity training.

Steve: Those are fan sites. They make no pretense of overall objectivity, and that's not what a typical user would want, either.

 

[Football_Bat]

Amazing considering Rivals went bankrupt in 2000. Maybe one of us can recount their bounceback from that.

 

[leo1]

Should it happen, let's hope they funnel some money into writing lessons for the "reporters" on some of their team sites. I've seen 12-year-olds put stories together and use quotes better than some of the hacks on the one I see regularly. Oh, yeah, and maybe invest a little in objectivity training.

Steve: Those are fan sites. They make no pretense of overall objectivity, and that's not what a typical user would want, either.

agreed. yahoo would be paying for rivals as is, so to speak. it attracts users although it's obviously hated here because we're journos.

but i think stevethepirate's concern is legit in one sense - let's hope fred fanboy's columns are clearly differentiated on the site from jeff passan, for example.

 

[KnuteRockne]

Amazing considering Rivals went bankrupt in 2000. Maybe one of us can recount their bounceback from that.

Back then they didn't charge for subscriptions. Like a lot of the dot coms, they thought they would survive on 100 percent advertising revenue.

 

[Ace]

I would go with all the change in my pocket. And I carry a lot of quarters some days.

 

[RokSki]

It sure is too bad that blogs suck, and that online stuff is nothing but a gimmick, eh? :)

 

[Satchel Pooch]

I wish I could come up with something these freaking yay-hoos would pay $7 a month for because it's like crack and they'll never give it up.

 

[KnuteRockne]

I would go with all the change in my pocket. And I carry a lot of quarters some days.

There is a Grand Canyon-sized difference between blogs that snark about the "MSM" and Rivals.com, a legitimate (if not always journalistically perfect, but who is?) news-gathering site.

 

[Big_Space]

might be a problem with this acquisition.

be sure to read the update, where Terry is threatening to sue the blog.

<a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/12/ceo-of-rivals-committed-securities-fraud-may-kill-yahoo-acquisition/">CEO Of Rivals Involved In Securities Fraud; May Kill Yahoo Acquisition</a>

 

[somewriter]

This is a done deal:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/technology/21yahoo.html

$98 mil, according to Sports Biz Journal.

 

[PalmettoStatesport]

I worked for a rivals site once. Different experience. I'll just leave it at that. PM for details

 

[Cadet]

$0

I see your $0 and raise you $0.

 

[pseudo]

Amazing considering Rivals went bankrupt in 2000. Maybe one of us can recount their bounceback from that.

Did some business with them before that meltdown, when they hosted a site for Shout! magazine. Bad memories.

 

[pressmurphy]

I don't see this acquisition doing much for Yahoo from the perspective of acquiring new audience. It does give them more inventory for delivery of targeted search, but they could have made a deal for that for a few million dollars a year rather than fronting $100 million.

Rivals screwed up several established, legit sports sites (like Dyestat.com) when they assumed room temperature back in 2000. I was about two weeks away from migrating my existing site to their platform and was going to invest about $12,000 to start up my network of stringers over the first 90 days after launch. I'm grateful they went belly-up when they did or else I would have lost about half of the $12 grand.

 

[Bucknutty]

Yahoo has already been distributing articles from sites within the Rivals network on the respective team pages on Yahoo for likely going on a full year now. I'm curious to see how this changes things -- if at all -- for either side.

And yes, if Yahoo starts putting all content from Rivals on its site, that will mean lots of people will be reading lots and lots of bad, bad articles.

 

[Cadet]

Minor threadjack: All hail dyestat.com. They do it right. It's not journalism, but it's one of the best non-journalism sports sites out there.