September 20th, 2012

ESPN Goes Realtime, Turns Its Content Firehose Into A Streaming Reader

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Oh, it’s on. Over the last year or so, ESPN has been experimenting with better ways to present and distribute its content on the Web and on mobile. Essentially, they realized (or at least I hope they did) that their user experience on their digital properties wasn’t great and that others were sneaking up on and passing them — their dominance in TV notwithstanding. Yesterday, they launched a new… → Read More

August 6th, 2012

Update: It’s Done. Time Warner Buys Bleacher Report, Price Reportedly $175M

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Update: TBS has now confirmed that it has bought Bleacher Report. The division will become a part of the Turner Sports division. That group currently manages digital properties on behalf of the NBA, NCAA and PGA, and it oversees ad sales for NASCAR.COM as well as a strategic sales relationship with Yahoo! Sports. It has 86 million unique visitors. The price of the deal was not disclosed but is… → Read More

March 29th, 2012

Bleacher Report Doubles Down On Personalized Content, Brings Team Stream To The Web

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It’s been fun to watch Bleacher Report grow from some random publishing site for amateur sports writers to a full-blown digital sports network backed by $40+ million in venture capital. Today, with 25 million unique visitors per month, Bleacher Report has become the fourth largest sports media property on the Web.

Over the last year or so, the popular sports network has been doubling down on… → Read More

January 20th, 2012

Bleacher Report Arrives On iPad With New Team Stream App

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Bleacher Report, the popular site for sports fans now boasting 22 million uniques per month, just released its Team Stream app for the iPad. Similar to Team Stream for iPhone and Android smartphones, the new Team Stream HD app features news and analysis and supports push notifications for breaking news.

This is the first tablet-optimized experience from the company, but it’s not the only one… → Read More

August 24th, 2011

As Football Season Kicks Off, Bleacher Report Raises $22 Million More

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Bleacher Report may have spent much of its life quietly climbing the rankings of top sports destinations, but it’s not being bashful or patient anymore.

In a little more than a year, it has hired Brian Grey as its new CEO, a guy who used to run two of its four largest competitors, and it has passed Sports Illustrated and CBS Sports in traffic, beefed up its sales staff, starting hiring a… → Read More

June 15th, 2011

Crash This Party and See Nerds Mating in the Wild

It’s been well documented that there aren’t as many women working in Silicon Valley and technology companies as we’d all like. Moving the conversation beyond raising awareness about this thing we’re all aware of, Kleiner Perkins’ partner Aileen Lee recently wrote a smart guest post for us arguing the business case for why Valley companies and VCs should be scouting more women. Namely, because they… → Read More

May 23rd, 2011

Bleacher Report Hires New Head of Revenue; Traffic Continues to Surge in May

Bleacher Report– one of the few new entrants in the sports content category to get significant traction against the portal giants– is continuing to build out its management team, announcing an important new hire today. Rich Calacci joins the company as chief revenue officer. Calacci was most recently senior vice president at CBS Interactive in charge of the sports vertical– one of the… → Read More

March 18th, 2011

Want to Get Paid to Drive and Write about Cars? (Fanboys Need Not Apply)

A while ago I wrote about how neglected the sports vertical was online, given the largest properties are mostly the same portals or online versions of old media sites that were launched in the late 1990s. It turns out another macho-content vertical is even more neglected– cars.

Quietly, a company called HighGear Media is building a pretty impressive business. It’s raised $12 million from top… → Read More

December 20th, 2010

Bleacher Report Raises $10.5M; Now Fifth Largest Sports Site

Bleacher Report is going to announce a new $10.5 million round of venture capital this morning and a lot of people reading this will probably say, “Bleacher-who?”

Somehow Bleacher Report has pulled off two things you’re not supposed to be able to pull off in Silicon Valley’s Web scene. The first is keeping a low-profile while growing steadily in users and revenues. The second is building a… → Read More

October 28th, 2008

Bleacher Report Hunkers Down With $3.5 Million More

Bleacher Report, a community publishing site for amateur sports writers, has raised $3.5 million in Series B funding from Hillsven Capital, Gordon Crawford, and SoftTech VC. Other participants in the round include Jacob Lodwick, founder of College Humor and Vimeo.

The extra cash should help the San Francisco-based company retain its 13 employees during a period of flattening online ad… → Read More

April 2nd, 2008

Yardbarker Scores $6M More for "Digg For Sports" Site

We called Yardbarker a particularly good, sports-focused Digg clone back when it launched in August 2006. Since then the site has expanded significantly, recruiting athletes as featured writers, kicking off an ad network for sports blogs, and raising a seed round of financing. Now the company has announced that it has raised $6M in it’s second round. Draper Fisher Jurvetson led the round and… → Read More