Fox Sports Interactive Acquires Sports Blog Network Yardbarker

Leena Rao

Leena Rao is currently a Senior Editor for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

Fox Sports Interactive Media has just announced that it has acquired Yardbarker, which operates a network of sports blogs. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

Founded in 2006, Yardbarker, which has 7.5 million average monthly users, is a network of 800-plus sports blogs and 70-plus pro athlete blogs, which includes content from Donovan McNabb and a number of other well-known athletes. The site also aggregates news articles about sports, which are submitted by users and voted up in a Digg-like fashion.

The deal isn’t completely surprising considering FSIM and Yardbarker already had a sales and content arrangement. Yardbarker, which has raised $8 million in funding, will join FOXSports.com, Scout.com, whatifsports.com and other sites belonging to Fox’s sports networks.

Mainstream media networks seem to be picking up blog networks like candy these days. AOL recently bought (ahem) TechCrunch a few weeks ago.

Website: ybnmedia.com
Funding: $8.13M

Yardbarker aggregates news articles about sports from around the web. These articles are submitted by users and voted up in a Digg-like fashion. Amateur writers can also contribute to the site with blog posts about their favorite sports topics. Sports videos and photos are also aggregated alongside articles. Professional Athletes like Baron Davis, Greg Oden, Champ Bailey, and Donovan McNabb, and Rajon Rondo contribute weekly blog entries. While Yardbarker.com is the company’s content hub page, the company also runs a network...

→ Learn more

blog comments powered by Disqus