In its first ‘official’ move since the big change to CEO Jerry Yang, Yahoo has purchased Tennessee based college sports fanatics site Rivals.com.
According to the news report from AP, Yahoo began negotiations with Rivals.com while Yahoo’s prior CEO Semel was still running the show, but the final paperwork was not signed until Yang’s second day as CEO.
Rivals.com currently has approximately 185,000 subscribers, and its CEO and 85 employees are expected to begin working for Yahoo as the company is absorbed. CNBC is reporting that Rivals.com will end up costing Yahoo close to $100 million. With it advertising and subscription mix, Rivals.com pulled in more than $20 million in revenue in 2006. Analysts expect this acquisition to increase the traffic to Rivals.com exponentially.
Opinion
For all of you college sports fans (Go Jayhawks!), Rivals.com is an essential website. I think this is a great purchase for Yahoo because of its already strong fantasy sports and sports news sites. I see this as a win-win for both companies and for college sports fans alike.
