not that it matters here -- but its an interesting move for Yahoo, one of the first major decisions of Yang's latest run as CEO..
How much for MUScoop?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/technology/21yahoo.htmlYahoo Buying a High School and College Sports Network
By MIGUEL HELFT
SAN FRANCISCO, June 20 — Just one day after the management shake-up at Yahoo, the company’s board was called on to make a decision that had nothing to do with the resignation of Terry S. Semel as chief executive or the appointment of the co-founder Jerry Yang to succeed him.
The board voted Tuesday to approve the acquisition of Rivals.com, an online network focused on college and high school sports, a deal the company plans to announce today.
The move is intended to bolster Yahoo’s position as an online destination for sports fans, where it competes with ESPN.com, Foxsports. com and others.
It is not a major acquisition. But Yahoo executives said buying another content provider underscores the company’s commitment to its media group, based in Santa Monica, Calif., whose strategy has shifted over time and whose future has been a subject of speculation since its chief, Lloyd Braun, left in December.
“We are very serious about leading in the media space,” said Scott Moore, senior vice president for news and information at Yahoo. “This deal will help us connect with the college and high school sports fan.”
Yahoo executives would not disclose the price of the acquisition, but individuals close to the company put it at around $100 million.
Yahoo hired Mr. Braun, a former ABC executive, in 2004, in part to set up a studio to produce original text and video content. But the scope of Mr. Braun’s ambitions were scaled back as he clashed over budgets with top executives at Yahoo headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif.
He left in December amid a companywide reorganization. Since then, other executives in the media group, including those who ran music, health and food Web sites, have left.
Since the departure of Mr. Braun, responsibility for the media group has been divided between Mr. Moore and Vince Broady, who is senior vice president for entertainment. Both report to Jeff Weiner, one of Mr. Semel’s protégés, who is responsible for much of the content and services on the Yahoo portal. The company is not seeking to replace Mr. Braun.
Mr. Moore said criticism of the media group was misplaced.
Yahoo has been bolstering its offerings, licensing content from a variety of top media partners like ABC, CBS and Fox. Yahoo is the most visited destination for news and finance, Mr. Moore noted.
In sports, Yahoo ranked second, with 15 million visitors, to ESPN.com’s 17.5 million visitors in May, according to comScore, a Web audience measuring firm, but its audience is growing at more than twice the rate than that of ESPN.com.
Explaining the departure of executives in the media group, Mr. Moore said: “Obviously Yahoo is going through a time of transition. Some people are O.K. with that and others decide to pursue their careers elsewhere.”
People close to the media group say Yahoo deserves credit for strengthening the basic technology and design behind many of the media Web sites, but that many of the sites could have been far more successful with more investment.
Yahoo’s strength has been as a distributor of content, said Barry Parr, a market analyst at Jupiter Research. “They understand how to license other people’s content, and they have been doing a really good job of that,” he said.
“Where they have stumbled is when they have tried to become original content producers.”
Despite the wide appeal of its media sites, one of Yahoo’s challenges is that its audience is typically older than that of popular social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and even YouTube, said Stewart Barry, a securities analyst with Think- Equity Partners.
“Where most investors are concerned is the relevance of Yahoo 5 to 10 years from now,” Mr. Barry said.
Rivals.com would help Yahoo tap a younger demographic, Mr. Moore said. With 1.4 million visitors in May, Rivals.com was the 19th most visited sports site, according to comScore, but its audience declined 14 percent from a year earlier. Rivals.com said it had 185,000 subscribers who pay $100 a year, or $10 a month, for access to premium content and features on the site.
Rivals.com currently syndicates its content to various sites, including Yahoo, AOL Sports and SI.com. Yahoo said it would reconsider those deals one by one, as some involve Yahoo Sports rivals.
The Web site paidContent.org reported in April that Yahoo and Rivals were close to a deal.
