Rivals.com
| URL | rivals.com |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | Sports News & Fan Interaction |
| Registration | Yes & No (depending on individual usage) |
| Available language(s) | English |
| Alexa rank |  2,024 (April 2013[update])[1] |
| Current status | Online |
Rivals.com is a network of websites that focus mainly on college football and basketball recruiting. The network was started in 1998 and currently employs more than 300 personnel.[2]
Contents |
History [edit]
Rivals.com was originally founded in 1998 by Jim Heckman in Seattle, Washington.[3] Heckman is the son-in-law of Don James, the former head football coach at the University of Washington, where Hickman attended school and was later involved in a recruiting scandal.[4] Rivals.com employed a subscription fee of $10.00 per month to users for access to the latest recruiting news and to participate in various message boards dedicated to schools being covered by the network. With money from venture capital firms, Rivals acquired AllianceSports, a regional network that primarily covered college sports in the Southeast of the United States, on January 2000.[5] During that period, Rivals.com employed close to 200 people, operated a network of 700 independent websites, filed for an initial public offering worth $100 million, and sponsored the Hula Bowl in Hawaii.[6] However, economic troubles soon led the Rivals Network, the parent company of Rivals.com, to seek bankruptcy protection in 2001.[6] Executives from AllianceSports purchased the Rivals.com assets during bankruptcy proceedings and subsequently relaunched the website.[7] Heckman, who had been fired as chief executive officer before bankruptcy, later started a competitor network initially named The Insider, which was later renamed Scout.com.[7]
Led by former AllianceSports executive Shannon Terry, Rivals.com became profitable. On June 20, 2007, Yahoo! agreed to acquire Rivals.com.[8] Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but several sources reported Yahoo! paid around $100 million.[9]
Schools [edit]
The individual collegiate sites can be found here. Schools included at Rivals are all schools from the:
Conferences that have sites for their schools, but not all of them include:
- 6 from the Atlantic 10
- 8 from the Mountain West
- 5 from the Sun Belt
- 5 from the WAC
- 4 from the Mid-American Conference
- 1 from the Missouri Valley Conference
- 6 Independents
References [edit]
- ^ "Rivals.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2013-04-22.
- ^ Rivals.com About Us
- ^ David Eckoff, "Seattle PI: Jim Heckman wheels, deals", Retrieved 2012-04-05
- ^ James' Son-in-Law Asked Cougar Recruit to Renege
- ^ AllianceSports Reestablishes Subscription Model
- ^ a b Venture Capital: Rivals.com is dead; long live Rivals.com
- ^ a b Ex Rivals Founder Shannon Terry Looking to Challenge Rivals, Scout, and ESPN with College Recruiting Network 2.0, 24/7 Sports
- ^ Yodel Anecdotal » Blog Archive » Listen up, (college) sports fans
- ^ Yahoo Buys Sports Site Rivals.com
External links [edit]
- Rivals.com Official site
- Yahoo! acquisition of Rivals.com
- The Football National Board- http://collegefootball.rivals.com/forum.asp?sid=1144&fid=2150&style=2&Reset=
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