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SB Nation

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SB Nation
File:SB-Nation-logo.png
www.sbnation.com
Screenshot
Screenshot of SB Nation's Homepage
Type of site
Sports news
Available inEnglish
OwnerVox Media
Founder(s)Matt Watson
URLwww.sbnation.com
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional (required for comments/posting)
Launched31 March 2005; 19 years ago (2005-03-31)[1]
Current statusActive

SB Nation (Sports Blog Nation)[3] is a sports news website owned and operated by Vox Media (formerly SportsBlogs, Inc.). Established in 2005, the site comprises 316 blogs covering individual professional and college sports teams, and other sports-oriented topics. The site operates from Vox’s offices just off Bryant Park in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, as well as Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C.[4]

SB Nation currently has content-sharing partnerships with Yahoo! Sports, CBS Sports, USA Today, Comcast and the National Hockey League (NHL).[5][6][7]

History

The concept of SB Nation was rooted in Athletics Nation, a blog focused on the Oakland Athletics, which was founded in 2003 by Tyler Bleszinski. Bleszinski noted that at the time, blogs focused on sports were a new concept limited to "mostly baseball sites on Typepad and Blogger", and that he was displeased over how the Athletics were being covered by these sites. In the spirit of Athletics manager Billy Beane, he decided to build his own blog with an aggressive focus on the team. Athletics Nation soon became the second-largest site on the advertising network Blogads behind the political blog Daily Kos. Its author, Markos Moulitsas, was also a friend of Bleszinksi; in 2005, Bleszinksi partnered with him to form SB Nation, which would serve as a network of sports blogs with a common platform enabling community participation. Athletics Nation began hiring additional part-time writers, while the SB Nation network would absorb and acquire other sports blogs focusing on major league and college teams.[8][9]

In 2008, Jim Bankoff, a former AOL executive, joined as CEO to expand SB Nation. Comparing it to his previous company's focus on publishing content in specific verticals, Bankoff wanted to build a topic-based sports media company, explaining that "when you go to Google you don't type in 'sports', you search for a specific team or a player. As media consumers, we're not sports fans, but we're fans of a given team. That's our philosophy here, and our tagline fits it well when it says pro quality—in reference to the type of content and commentary, and fan perspective—as we speak from a fan voice, which can mean we're sometimes very critical."[9][10]

Relaunch

In 2009, SBNation.com was re-launched to serve as a nationally-focused portal for the network's sites.[9] As of February 2009, there were about 185 blogs. ComScore, the Reston, Virginia-based tracker of consumer Internet habits, tallied 5.8 million unique visitors to SB Nation websites during the month of November 2010. That 208 percent increase over the 1.9 million unique visitors in November 2009 made SB Nation the fastest growing sports website the company tracked at that time.[11]

As of December 2010, SB Nation had 12 million unique visitors and over 100 million page views monthly; the site also announced plans to expand its scope into international sports by launching blogs focused on the English Premier League of soccer.[12]

Vox Media

In 2011, a number of editors from AOL's blog Engadget, including Joshua Topolsky, left the site to join SB Nation, where they would begin work on launching a new technology website under its ownership known as The Verge, with Topolsky as editor-in-chief.[13][14] Following the launch of The Verge, SB Nation's parent company was renamed Vox Media.[9][15]

In November 2011, Vox Media acquired MMAFighting.com from AOL; the site was integrated into SB Nation.[16] In December 2011 Time, listed SB Nation #1 in Sports, and #15 overall in its "50 Websites That Make the Web Great" list.[17]

In September 2012, SB Nation unveiled a comprehensive redesign of the website codenamed "SB United". The project reconstructed the site with a unified format and design, using a responsive, "magazine-style" presentation with multimedia and "StoryStreams", and new circular logo designs for each one of the site's blogs. The changes came under the direction of Spencer Hall, writer of the college football blog Every Day Should Be Saturday, who was named as the site's first ever editorial director, and stated that he had wanted to "corral some kind of common vision and coordination" between the individual blogs on SB Nation.[18][19][20]

In March 2013, Vox Media acquired Outsports, a blog focusing on sport in the LGBT community. It was integrated into SB Nation.[21]

On July 18, 2016, Vox Media announced a partnership with GOW Media, under which its Yahoo! Sports Radio network was re-branded as SB Nation Radio on August 1, 2016. SB Nation and its blogs will contribute on-air personalities and co-develop new content for the network.[22]

Holtzclaw controversy

In February 2016, the site published a lengthy profile of Daniel Holtzclaw, a former police officer convicted of multiple accounts of rape and other charges, focusing on his college football career. The piece, which was seen as sympathetic to Holtzclaw, was heavily criticized and was taken down within hours of publication. SB Nation's editorial director Spencer Hall apologized for "a complete breakdown" of SB Nation's editorial process, and described the story and its publication as a "complete failure" of site standards.[23][24][25] SB Nation subsequently cut ties with the story's author, freelance journalist Jeff Arnold, and put its longform program on hiatus pending a peer review of the editorial process that led to the Holtzclaw piece being published.[26]

See also

References

  1. ^ "SbNation.com WHOIS, DNS, & Domain Info - DomainTools". WHOIS. Retrieved 2016-07-15.
  2. ^ "sbnation.com Site Overview". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
  3. ^ Dubois, Lou (20 August 2010). "The Evolution of Sports Blog Nation". Inc. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
  4. ^ Dan Orlando (July 12, 2013). "Bleacher Report, SB Nation and Deadspin strive to define future of booming sports-blogging niche". New York Business Journal. Retrieved September 15, 2015.
  5. ^ "SB Nation, Comcast SportsNet sign deal to share content". sportsbusinessdaily.com.
  6. ^ "Comcast SportsNet content sharing with SB Nation". Philadelphia Business Journal. 28 June 2010.
  7. ^ "SB Nation Scores A Link Deal With The NHL". TechCrunch. AOL.
  8. ^ "Tyler Bleszinski, co-founder of SB Nation, to leave Vox Media". Capital New York. Retrieved 20 January 2016.
  9. ^ a b c d "The Raid On AOL: How Vox Pillaged Engadget And Founded An Empire". Business Insider. Retrieved 20 January 2016.
  10. ^ "Interview with Jim Bankoff, CEO of SBNation.com". Inc.com. Retrieved September 4, 2015.
  11. ^ Overly, Steven (20 December 2010). "SB Nation's sports blogger collective sees bias as a plus". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2010-01-08.
  12. ^ "The New Game in Sports Journalism: SB Nation Claims 100 Million Monthly Views -- Going Global with Soccer Coverage". Beet.tv. 10 December 2010. Retrieved 2011-02-08.
  13. ^ Swisher, Kara (March 12, 2011). "Exclusive: Engadget's Top Editors Topolsky and Patel Exit From AOL's Giant Tech Site". All Things Digital. Archived from the original on May 4, 2013. Retrieved May 4, 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  14. ^ Swisher, Kara (April 3, 2011). "SB Nation Sacks AOL in Raid of Former Engadget Team for Competing New Tech Site, As AOL Zeroes in on New EiC". All Things Digital. Archived from the original on May 4, 2013. Retrieved May 4, 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  15. ^ Kramer, Staci D. (October 31, 2011). "With Launch of The Verge, SB Nation Parent Rebrands as Vox Media". Gigaom. Retrieved March 21, 2015.
  16. ^ "MMA Fighting Sold to Vox Media". MMAFighting.com. Retrieved 18 November 2015.
  17. ^ McCracken, Harry (16 August 2011). "SB Nation - The 50 Best Websites of 2011 - TIME". TIME.com.
  18. ^ "Vox Media says design helps charge SB Nation". New York Business Journal. Retrieved 2 November 2015.
  19. ^ "SB Nation United: the big rebrand". Vox Media. Retrieved 2 November 2015.
  20. ^ "SB Nation Relaunches, Hires First Editorial Director". Adweek. Retrieved 2 November 2015.
  21. ^ O'Keeffe, Michael (2013-03-05). "Outsports.com, which covers the gay athletes, bought by SB Nation parent company Vox Media". Daily News (New York). Retrieved 2013-04-23.
  22. ^ "SB Nation Expands Into Radio Programming With Gow Media Accord". Bloomberg. Retrieved 18 July 2016.
  23. ^ Bonesteel, Matt (February 18, 2016). "SB Nation is right: Its story about a convicted rapist was a 'complete failure'". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 19, 2016.
  24. ^ Victor, Daniel (February 18, 2016). "SB Nation Removes Article Criticized as Sympathetic to Convicted Rapist". The New York Times. Retrieved February 19, 2016.
  25. ^ Mitchell, Benjamin F (February 18, 2016). "SB Nation publishes, takes down "failure" of story about Holtzclaw". USA Today. Retrieved February 19, 2016.
  26. ^ Howard, Greg (2016-02-19). "SB Nation Memo Announces Hiatus For Longform Program". Deadspin.
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