Yahoo Buys College Site to Maintain Sports Lead

Jun 21, 04:26 PM

Current Headlines: INTERNET company Yahoo, is acquiring sports site Rivals.com, a site for fans of college and high-school teams, bolstering the internet media company's place as the top sports site in audience terms.

The purchase brings Yahoo a base of more than two million fans of high-school and college football and basketball but, as the first deal under new chief executive Jerry Yang, more importantly signals to shareholders that the company is pursuing growth after the management upheavals.

Yahoo chairman and chief executive Terry Semel stepped down as chief executive this week in favour of co-founder Yang. Although Yahoo began negotiating with Rivals.com while Semel was still at the helm, the acquisition papers weren't signed until Yang's second day as chief, said Scott Moore, a Yahoo senior vicepresident who oversees its news division.

"Jerry is very excited about it," Moore told reporters.

The deal, believed to be in the region of $100 million (50 million), also intensifies Yahoo's competition with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp's online division, which owns a similar site, Scout.com. Yahoo is considering a deal that would see My- Space folded into an enlarged group with News Corp becoming a major shareholder.

No financial terms of the Rivals.com deal were disclosed but the site will function as an independent unit in Yahoo Sports, a media site that attracts a monthly audience of 15 million visitors, according to audience measurement firm comScore.

Yahoo thinks Rivals.com will help fill some gaps in its sports section, Moore said. Besides following more than 100 colleges and universities, Rivals.com follows high school sports to help identify the top prospects for athletic scholarships.

Chief executive Shannon Terry will be retained by Yahoo, and its 85 employees absorbed. Yahoo Sports is a success story for Yahoo, and one area where it beats Google in attracting subscribers.

The sports section is a big contributor to revenue. While advertising-supported, it has a sizeable subscriber base for its fantasy sports league, recently surpassed the audience of its biggest competitor, ESPN.com, which has about 12.7 million users, according to comScore..

(c) 2007 Evening Standard; London (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.