On the heels of Sports Illustrated deciding to yield control of their website to Turner Sports, Sporting News has opted to ship off the popular The Sporting Blog to SB Nation. A very interesting move, one that was probably aided by the fact that SB Nation's Senior Editor, Chris Mottram (Jaime Mottram's brother and FanHouse guru), was actually the initial head of The Sporting Blog. From today's announcement on TechCrunch:

Launched in 2007, The Sporting Blog is meant to be a slightly more fun take on sports news. But as SportingNews, an outfit that is well over 100 years olds, is moving towards a more comprehensive coverage approach, they believed SB Nation would be a great new home for their blog.

While SB Nation has been putting a lot of work into their regional sites, The Sporting Blog content will help maintain their flagship site and inject some fun into it. The Sporting Blog archives will also be maintained a preserved, SB Nation CEO Jim Bankoff says. Terms of the deal were not disclosed — though we hear from sources close to the deal that little, if any, cash exchanged hands.

Its really hard to make sense of this deal on a couple of fronts, but if you read between the lines it seems as if SB Nation came to the rescue of The Sporting Blog which inexplicaly may have been on the chopping block. Somewhat of a bold ascertation but that's what all the signs point to including:

- The TechCrunch article blatantly says this wasn't really a cash acquisition.

- Other than Michael Tunison and Andy Hutchins, the other 7 writers will not be moving over with the blog.

- Dan Shanoff, one of the displaced writers, wrote "My column's most recent home is traded to one of my favorite sports media companies." It's very subtle but the word traded is a big clue.

- Other contributors are insinuating that there is more to the story and that The Sporting Blog as we know it will not continue.

- The overall tone of the announcement on the Sporting News is somewhat somber. If SBN has approached them, offered them a lot of money for the site, you would think it would include all of the writers and The Sporting News would be a bit more celebratory about the move. Plus its inferred in the TC article that The Sporting News pulled the plug and then gave SBN a call . Again to quote the article, "But as SportingNews, an outfit that is well over 100 years old, is moving towards a more comprehensive coverage approach, they believed SB Nation would be a great new home for their blog."

Comprehensive coverage? I would think that would include 9 great writers who are revered in the sports blogosphere. Guess not.

-  Its not really articulated if thesportingblog.com will redirect to SB Nation or become its own site as part of SBN. Its very possible the site URL and the brand may actually not be involved with this deal. We should find out soon, but for now its seems SBN is really focusing on the fact they are getting the archives which makes me think that they were in danger of being deleted and SBN stepped in.

So maybe I am reading between the lines a little too much and connecting dots that aren't connected (feel free to chime in in the comments), but it seems obvious that this to some degree just fell in SBN's lap. That being said that doesn't take away from positive implications of the move.

What this means for SBN

First and foremost Tunison and Hutchins are 2 great assets to have on board. I think the quality and quantity of content especially from non journalists is becoming more of a priority for startups in this space. Its something we're working to improve at Bloguin, something that Yardbarker took some flack  for at Blogs With Balls, and something Bleacher Report is looking to change as their brand has taken a beating over the past year or so.

With SBnation.com as well as the regional sites becoming more of a focus for SB Nation, I'm sure having two talents like Tunison and Hutchins will certainly help as SBN continues to differentiate themselves to publishers, advertisers, and sports fans. Its unclear what they'll do for SBN ( a new incarnation of the Sporting Blog or something else entirely), but its something to keep a close eye on.

It's also noteworthy that SB Nation's prestige seems to be opening up doors for them at this point. This really isn't a major tech story, but TechCrunch thought it was newsworthy enough to write about. Also the fact that it seems SBN was sought out by Sporting News for this deal says a lot.

Dying to know what they gave up in the acquisition/trade. If I had to guess, I'd say they'll be promoting something or other for the Sporting News (the magazine, special editions, sporting news articles similar to their syndication relationship with Yahoo, Fan House, or Comcast). We'll see.

The other interesting item is that SB Nation announced they hired Anthony De Rosa to run a Tumbr blog for SB Nation which can be found here. Not too familiar with De Rosa so I'll hold off on any comment on the hire for now. I think its pretty interesting that SB Nation is launching a blog on Tumblr though given how well received their own proprietary platform is. I'd love to hear the rationale behind this.

Tumblr certainly has a unique style and brings its own flavor of presentation and community interaction so its not crazy but certainly an interesting decision. For a company that really touts their platform (and rightfully so), they must see a lot of unique value in the Tumblr platform that couldn't be replicated easily within their current platform.

What this means for The Sporting News

Well we don't really know what happened behind the scenes here but this is peculiar move. While The Sporting Blog wasn't a massive web property, it still did a good amount of traffic as exhibited below.

Not sure how they paid the writers but it seems likely they were losing money here. Still though it would have likely been a very small amount of money for a big company and I am sure The Sporting Blog could have been tweaked to be profitable if need be.

Also typical visitors of The Sporting Blog are visitors that are more engaged than normal Sporting News visitors. Its also likely that a good chunk of these visitors were only on The Sporting News website to read The Sporting Blog which is kind of sad because you'd hope it would be the other way around to a certain degree.

As noted before, this move occurs a little over a week after Sports Illustrated announced they'll let Turner Sports who also runs digital properties for Golf.com, nascar.com, nba.com, and PGA.com. While Sporting News is going to continue running their website, its very questionable what the motives were to cut The Sporting Blog loose considering how strong of a brand and following it had.

I give credit to the Sporting News for finding the blog a new home as well as taking the initiative in 2007, when sports blogs were still not mature. But the sudden scuttling is a disappointing on many fronts and one that really could be elaborated on.

My total stab in the dark goes something like this:

The content higher ups at The Sporting News weren't keen on the Sporting Blog. It was like the cool corner of a dive bar that was too loud and young for the regulars. This has happened before when a bunch web 1.0 people in charge at AOL got a little jealous/critical of Fanhouse's stewardship under the Mottram brothers which led to them leaving.

At the same time, Yahoo is dominating with their sports blog coverage led by Jaime Mottram, and entities like NBC Sports with their impersonation of Y! Sports blogs as well as SB Nation, Deadspin, The Big Lead, FanHouse, and hell even Bleacher Report, became more viable entities that competed with The Sporting Blog.

With the blog space getting crowded and Sporting News needing a new way to differentiate themselves, they opted to tap into the genius of Buzz Bissinger and shutter the Sporting Blog to be blog free for the time being. This was done under the guise of improving their brand and cost cutting. They realized just shutting down something which had a lot of popularity and goodwill would not be good so they either reached out to SBN, or word leaked out to Chris Mottram who was the original visionary behind the site and a deal was brokered that didn't require much capital.

Again none of that is substantiated at all  but given the lack of details, this is the most likely scenario in my mind. If anyone wants to throw out another theory or shed some light who is in the know, go for it.

Update- A couple of people replied that the theory above is close to what happened. Below is a Tweet from Chris Mottram. Also other people have indicated on Twitter that Brian Cook will be joining the fold which makes sense as I've heard his former college football blog will be switching its affiliation from CBS to SB Nation.

Jeff Price- Head of Sporting News Digital

Another funny thing is that back in February, The Sporting News named former SI executive, Jeff Price, as their head of digital. He quickly axed fantasy games (probably a smart move), but was very vocal that they might look to make some acquisitions. In particular the author eluded to The Sporting News acquiring SB Nation or something like it in the future.

"Price led or took part in a number of investments and acquisitions while he was at SI, including the acquisitions of FanNation and Golf.com. Will he be shopping at ACBJ? “I think the reality is we’re going to look at the marketplace really hard. If we see gaps that really need to be filled, buying is one way to get there. But our core  competency is not going to be a tech company.”

Fast forward less than a half year later and The Sporting News hasn't bought anything. In fact the startup that people suggested might be of interest to them, actually acquired a large asset from them and apparently for not much at all. In the end this goes down as a loss for The Sporting News and a win for SB Nation. Regardless of what the motives were behind this deal, The Sporting News is losing a popular property with great content, SBN is adding 2 great writers and a lot of content, and unfortunately 7 high quality contributors are now without that platform and income although can be found elsewhere.

I hope to have a follow up piece about something similar in the works in the coming weeks, but for now The Sporting News becomes another notch on bedpost for SB Nation to go along with Yahoo, CBS, NHL, and Comcast as mainstream entities that have shown SB Nation some love.

If you are not a college football or basketball fan you probably are not intimately familiar with Scout and Rivals, two competing college sports networks. Although their audience is limited primarily to America's most fanatical sports fan-base, their impact on the online sports digital world and the companies' back stories are somewhat riveting.

Things have been mainly quiet for the two online publishing giants post mainstream media acquisitions. Scout has flown largely under the radar since they were acquired 2005, when they were acquired by Fox for around $60 million although their leadership team moved on in the years since and there was this ugly lawsuit settlement that they somehow managed to keep out of the public's eye.

Picture of Shannon Terry

Rivals too has been eerily silent since Yahoo acquired them back in 2007 for around $100 million dollars. It was reported over a year ago that Rivals' CEO, Shannon Terry was leaving the company, as he seemed a bit reluctant to move to the West Coast to rub elbows with the Yahoo brain trust.

Meanwhile ESPN too has had their own recruiting network problems and I've voiced some skepticism about their affiliate models on a couple of different occasions. Now it seems ESPN's foray into the college sports/recruiting space may be winding down as a handful of their largest affiliates are jumping ship including my other writing home, Bucknuts.com.  Along with a lot of former ESPN sites it seems a 24/7 will be plucking a lot of great publishers from the likes of Scout and Rivals for their formal launch which should be happening in the next 60 days.

From Mr. Bucknuts announcement yesterday.

24/7 is a new effort of which Bucknuts is on the ground floor along with another 20 or so of the industry’s largest web sites. It is headed by Shannon Terry, previously the founder of Rivals.com. Terry served as Rivals’ Chief Executive Officer, overseeing the corporate strategy, new product development and day-to-day management. He was named to the Sports Business Journal's Forty-Under-40 in 2006 and 2007, and the Forty-Under-40 Hall of Fame in 2008. Terry was also named to the trade publication's 20 Most Influential People in Online Sports list in 2007 and 2008.

This is quite a jarring splash to the online digital world even outside of college sports and I'll make that connection in just a bit. But before we get to the impact of this new network and what I expect to see from them as well as things I'd want given I'll be writing on their platform, I thought it would be wise to drop some knowledge on the Rivals, Scout, ESPN saga that has been playing out over the last decade. It quite an adventure.

Venture Capital, A Failed IPO, Bankruptcy, Fire Sale Acquisitions, Competition, Big Acquisitions,  Lawsuits, and Departures

Let's rewind to the late 90's. Did you have an email address back then? Did you even own a computer? If you did how did you use the web? I bring this up because it was a whole different world, but things were changing and probably a bit too fast.

Jim Heckman, the son of a former Washington football coach, started Rivals noticing that the web was changing how college sports fans were getting their information. Local newspapers did an okay job covering colleges, but the coverage was always a day late and a bit lacking in some areas.

For the real diehard fans, college sports is year round because recruiting is year round and each fan base has a passionate core group of fans who lust for as much recruiting information as they can get their hands on. Its almost kind of a disease as these fans impatiently try to will top recruits to their school and obsessively follow the entire recruiting process for dozens of players every year. Recruiting never stops, developments happen daily, and fans wanted more than what local newspapers and television could offer. They also wanted to add their own two cents about every single development along the way.

With this in mind Heckman started Rivals, hoping to cover the entire college landscape with a site staffed with full time reporters whose job was to constantly dig up the freshest recruiting news, analyze any developments, and encourage discussion in forums. Obviously the coverage of the actual games (football, basketball, other sports) were a part of the content mix, but it was the recruiting information that got recruiting junkies to pay $10 a month to get all the good stuff thanks to a pay-wall that always made overtures to your wallet because you just had to know where the next Joe Montana was visiting this upcoming weekend.

The network filled out. Some of the sites were new and owned and operated by Rivals, but some were independent sites who signed up as a partner to Rivals. Life was good and the company filed for an IPO at the height of the Internet bubble. That's where it gets interesting.

Revenue was coming in the door and the company had raised an amazing $80 million but the dot com bubble ended any hopes of an IPO and worse yet the company was running out of money. Hard to think what happened to all the money but you'd think a lot of capital was spent on hiring writers, signing up sites with bonuses/guarantees, etc, but still that's a massive amount of capital that was spent. You could probably chalk some of it up to the times as startups had no fear of burning venture capital dollars. Another thing to consider is Rivals tried to branch off to other sports which probably inflated overhead and ultimately could have been the fatal move.

With Rivals in danger, Heckman left the company/was fired and Rivals began to wind down operations and filed for bankruptcy proceedings. But Heckman found a new group of investors who wanted to buy the company and mobilized to do so.

"I will dedicate my life to making this company work for all of you, because I understand that you are the only important people in this idea. I feel that was lost, but I ask that you allow me to bring our family together again for one more try," writes Heckman, who founded Rivals.com in 1998 but then was ousted as CEO last summer. He then goes on to ask publishers for just nine months to prove his concept."

Things got interesting though as a group led by Shannon Terry and Bobby Burton also wanted to buy Rivals now that it was a firesale price and succeeded in doing so in 2001. The details of the takeover are shaky at best but from what I've gathered, Heckman and his group were real close and there was a lot of loyalty to him by the handful of people still running Rivals in its finals day, but in the end the Tennessee group won out and Rivals had new life.

Picture of Jim Heckman

But Heckman and his group moved on undeterred and you have to tip your cap to Heckman who raised more money despite losing over $80 million at Rivals and getting fired as he raised $1.8 million almost immediately after the loss of Rivals and subsequently dozens more millions in the years to come.

Initially Heckman named the company The Insiders but it later changed to Scout and up until today the companies share a fierce rivalry. In fact the two companies went to court over publisher recruiting tactics as both companies looked to scoop up the best and biggest sites on the web.

Tension between Rivals and Scout resulted in a series of lawsuits several years ago centered on tactics used to lure individual team site publishers after the original Rivals folded. The companies settled in 2003 by agreeing not to disparage each other and to abide by publishers' contracts, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

''It's very heated between them,'' said Drew Champlin, who worked at Rivals.com's BamaOnline site for six months. ''On a scale of 1 to 10, it's probably 100.''

Scout again went down the path of spreading a wide net of covering multiple sports while Rivals stayed focused on college sports. Both companies matured, began to bring in 8 figure annual revenue, all while growing their audience. There were rumors of ESPN, AOL, Yahoo, and Fox looking at both companies but in the end Fox purchased Scout on the heels of their acquisition of Myspace in 2005 for around $60 million. This acquisition really flew under the radar to most but was a larger development than it showed on the surface.

By 2005, the economy was beginning to churn again and in particular online advertising was beginning to become a major growth market. ESPN was entrenched on television, SI owned print, but who would conquer online? ESPN had the lead, Yahoo was making some noise, CBS had made some moves, and now Fox thought they could make a splash by adding Scout. Not only did they pad their audience by several million monthly visitors (cutting the ESPN lead dramatically), they now had a large network to grow out various local offerings as well promote the larger Fox Sports.

But things got real hairy pretty quickly for Scout. There was talk that Fox wanted to somehow make Scout "MySpace Sports" but apparently someone with an IQ over 100 put the kabosh on that. Scout's leadership team also began to leave and with the company in Seattle and Fox in LA, it seemed to further stagnate any type of progress with the company. Technology seemed to become a pain point as well as a cataylst for an exodus of some of their largest publishers including Bucknuts (this actually in a round about way led to me writing for them).

The publishers banded together and sued Scout claiming Scout was skimming online advertising revenue and subscription revenue in addition to a lot of other gripes that would fall under general breach of contract. Scout/Fox settled the lawsuit to the tune of $5 million+ , a rather large admission of guilt. It was about at this time that Fox was getting publicly trounced for their inept coverage of the BCS bowls (Fox had no NCAA games all year but somehow had the BCS bowl rights in another zinger of an idea). Between the BCS broadcast debacles and lack of any substantive progress with Scout as well College Football News (also acquired by Fox), you have to wonder if the suits at Fox just decided to focus elsewhere.  The 5 million dollar settlement combined with the legal fees and the realization they bought a lemon of a company has seemingly dampened any chance of Scout being an intricate part of Fox's digital strategy going forward. Its the black sheep of Fox digital at this point while Myspace is merely just the very public black eye.

Heckman actually stayed with Fox and rose the ranks making inroads with Rupert Murdoch being his lead negotiator in the infamous Google Myspace seach deal. That's a story for another day, but at a high level Heckman and Fox flat out jacked Google to the tune of $900 million and Myspace has been lazy ever since as the checks kept coming from Google. Years from now this maybe looked at as the turning point in Facebook vs myspace and with the deal ending very shortly, myspace's future is very much up in the air with an incredible amount of people leaving the company/jumping off the sinking ship.

Heckman would later leave to start 5to1 media, an online advertising company with a good concept but with a lackluster reputation in the online advertising world.

Meanwhile that group in Tennessee led by Shannon Terry did a pretty solid job with Rivals and eventually became profitable. In 2007 Yahoo made a bold move and shelled out $100+ million for Rivals. With better technology and a more focused vision, Rivals outpaced Scout and more importantly avoided any litigation issues. Yahoo who was breathing down the neck of ESPN in terms of online dominance thanks to superior fantasy offerings, a new war chest of writers, and a growing emphasis on sports blogs after hiring Jamie Mottram away from AOL. The Rivals acquistion now gave Yahoo a larger audience than ESPN, a distinction that helps greatly with online advertising sales.

By the time ESPN realized that being second to a West Coast internet company was hurting their online monetiztion, they rolled out a collection of initiatives all of which are ongoing and somewhat controversial. ESPN partnered with Bucknuts as their first external affiliate and later locked down a  lot of the other large Scout publishers who left and sued. ESPN city sites like ESPN New York as well as blog networks like SweetSpot and True Hoop were additional attempts to build their aggregate number to retake the online lead away from Yahoo. If you've read my stuff in the past, you know I am very critical of ESPN affiliate models and the lack of value they provide to publishers. That being said its no surprise that Bucknuts and a very large chunk of the ESPN affiliates are now leaving to join 24/7.

More than a year ago Terry left Yahoo (probably when his non compete ended). Just like Scout and Fox, it seemed Rivals being so far away from the parent company in Yahoo really impeded growth.

Fast forward to today and 24/7 sports is on the verge of launching with a very impressive dozen or so publishers, many of which have announced their new direction similar to Bucknuts. These aren't just websites, but in many cases the number 1 website for some of the most vibrant fan communities in the country. Many of which seem to be disgruntled Yahoo/Rivals publishers or maybe they're just enamored with Terry and the team in Tennessee.

Besides various conversations I've had and some internet chatter on sites that are joining, there really isn't a lot of information about 24/7 at this time. I reached out to them for a couple of reasons including to get more info but haven't heard back. Between their website, photo account, and twitter acount I've been able to piece these facts together:

- Shannon Terry is CEO.

- Bobby Burton maybe joining

- Ronnie Sanders a former SEC recruiting Director is also involved

- They've raised a sizable amount of capital

- They're located in the same area as Rivals initially was (Brentwood, Tennessee)

- They are working around the clock on the engineering side. It seems the goal is to get the sites all on a new platform including message boards by the start of the season. The idea of migrating so many large sites, users, forum posts, articles, etc spanning multiple platforms almost makes my stomach turn.

- The network will not only launch with size-able reach but will put a dent into Yahoo and ESPN whose number will go down because of the defections

- In addition to a tremendous list of sites, they've added recruiting gurus Gerry Hamilton, JC Shurburtt, and Bryan Matthews to the fold.

View of 24/7 Sports office from their photo account.

Frankly with ESPN, Scout, and Rivals you think this would be a crowded space, but really this is a smart move. There is a lot chatter that Scout is going to be slimmed down substantially as many sites are losing money, ESPN's network is basically imploding thanks to 24/7 Sports, and Rivals while viable is also taking a HUGE hit.

A lot of startups like SBN, Yardbarker, FSV, Bleacher Report, along with media companies like CBS and NBC actually benefit from this as it looks like the front of the pack in Yahoo, ESPN, and to a lesser degree Fox will be losing some ground in terms of network audience size.

This opportunity only exists because 3 major media companies in Fox, Yahoo, and ESPN have failed to really find a model or a technology offering that is viable to publishers, advertisers, and most importantly visitors and subscribers. Blogs have also been eating away at these recruiting sites for quite awhile, but at the end of the day you still need full time people calling and constantly tracking the thousands of high school recruits spanning both football and basketball.

Obviously Terry and his people didn't like Yahoo's execution and plan with Rivals and decided to have another run at it. I am sure Yahoo is extremely irked that the guy that sent a huge check to buy Rivals is now jacking some of their biggest properties, but regardless whatever value proposition 24/7 is shopping, investors and publishers are eating it up.

Without anything to review its hard to say just how they'll be different from the legacy recruiting networks and just what they've promised to publishers in terms of things like equity in the new company, cash buyouts/acquistions, advertising guarantees, bonuses, etc. Potentially some site owners were offered full time employment as deal clinchers.

I'd surmise some amount of capital was spent to get these larger publishers on board in hopes it would spur smaller publishers and even just talented journalists to give 24/7 a look.

In terms of technology, I am on pins and needles to see what they came up with and when they'll be rolling out the platform. Rivals and Scout particularly have really failed here and technology, especially web applications, and programming languages have made major advancements since Scout and Rivals were architected.

I am hoping to see major upgrades in terms of message boards, recruiting databases (Google Maps Mashup please!), commenting, video, mobile apps, and live chat (seriously just use CoveritLive... Scout and Bucknuts use the worst chat programs known to man). They'd also be wise to fully utilize web 2.0 technology like custom widgets (no network has grasped this concept yet), blog syndication/promotion, twitter, Facebook, and social sharing options. Reading between the lines, it looks like a lot of this is in the works.

When the curtain is pulled back (who knows when that will be), they'll be live with some of the most passionate fans in the country and an audience that should span 2 million+ and maybe much higher. Its hard to say if 24/7 will conquer this niche, flush out competition, or fall somewhere along the way.

Either way I am excited to see a new burst of innovation/competition in the space as well as departing ESPN, a company whose digital ineptitude was souring my ambition to create content on Bucknuts. I'll probably do a follow up piece with more thoughts post launch. Until then, best of luck to the guys there as I know they're burning the midnight oil racing to get things just right for the launch.

Awhile back I wrote an extended piece on why I didn't like ESPN's affiliate model network.  Currently ESPN has three different external networks which span the NBA (True Hoop), MLB ( SweetSpot), and NCAA (not named). The piece I wrote back in April seemed to solicit a lot of reaction including:

1- A handful of really nasty and unprofessional emails from ESPN. One of them went out of the way to point out that the very few select bloggers who do get paid by ESPN, actually make way less than I suggested. Ok.... I had it wrong. ESPN does NOT pay very select bloggers a GOOD monthly stipend, but rather pays select group of very select bloggers a very SMALL stipend. My bad.

2- Support from sports 2.0 and online advertising professionals who were glad that I accentuated the case against ESPN

3- Support from bloggers for explaining how and why their various network models were flawed.

It seems that my take has been embraced by others as one blogger  references a lot of my talking points in explaining why he turned ESPN down. I've also heard of many other sites giving them a no, so it's no real surprise that Rob Neyer, who runs the MLB network, is having a tough time finding quality bloggers (maybe its because they're already alligned with network partners that provide real value).

"As you've noticed, Billy, we don't yet have all the teams covered. I'll be completely honest with you ... I thought we'd have 25 teams covered by now, and probably all 30 by the All-Star break.

Instead we've got 21, with (at this moment) no real prospects for more. I do think we'll make some progress this season. I just don't know when, or how much. "

Rob's post actually didn't go over too well as seemed it to dismiss the possibility of new bloggers being able to fill the void of unsuccessful recruiting efforts

"The sad truth is that even if you've got the time to write about your favorite team every day, you probably don't have the analytical skills or the writing chops we're looking for. You might, someday."

Not the most glowing endorsement to get in the blogging game eh? The above quote and the tweet below definitely don't have the feel of a guy who really embraces blogging as a new form of media (besides his own blogging of course)

Enough picking on Rob on getting back on point as to why these networks are flawed regardless of what out of touch ESPN suit runs them.

I've meant to write this post for the last week or so, but the timing seems right given that  Bucknuts.com (where I write on the side), the first ever ESPN affiliate, is now  considering leaving ESPN. Below is a snippet in a recent article and its just a morsel of the full story behind the scenes which I can't share in this post.

But we never fully realized our ambitions to have more timely and more considered recruiting information, and we took a ton of grief for just affiliating with the “four letter word”.

Now, I ask you: should we stay or should we go? Is it worth the “brand” without the cattle? Is ESPN more a hindrance or a help?

The chatter in the comments and in the forums is very critical of ESPN with negative opinions about ESPN's partnership with Bucknuts outnumbering positive ones by about a 6:1 ratio.

Well the owner of Bucknuts knows my feelings about this and my prior blog on this topic is probably a better suited to make the case against ESPN, but I'd like to submit some new evidence that I think is further proof of a senseless, dumbfounding, and somewhat incompetent digital network strategy.

Below I present exhibits A, B, and C into evidence. Please note the ESPN advertising on all three and the site you are seeing the advertising on. Although they are promoting ESPN on ABC, these ads refreshed every couple of days to promote games on ESPN as well and I know for a fact it was ESPN's ad campaign.

Yes, ESPN bought ads on Benkoo.com and you know what? It was a smart move. The above 3 screenshots show ESPN buying ads across three different advertising companies and three different publishers. Someone even just emailed me that Fanhouse also received some ad dollars from ESPN as well.

Given that the NBA playoff schedule can be painfully erratic (multiple days between games) in addition to games being televised on three different networks (TNT, ESPN, ABC), the ESPN ad campaign certainly made sense. In fact it worked on me several times when I came to the realization that a big game was coming up that I was unaware of.

ESPN targeted quite possibly tens of millions of sports fans spanning 3 different sports specific ad networks and the campaign (which refreshed creative for every game of the semi finals and finals) most likely was spread across thousands of publishers. Seeing some of the accounting for these campaigns, I can tell you that they paid well and the ad buy was pretty significant. In fact ESPN also had a very large campaign a couple months before promoting ESPN3 which targeted many of the same networks and publishers.

Between those two ad buys, you're looking at a handful of ad companies and thousands of sports websites dividing up what was likely a 100k-200k ad buy by ESPN....maybe more.

But what about the 60-80 official ESPN affiliates? With ESPN finally making the move to advertising its events and products externally off of its own properties and channels, sadly ESPN neglected their own affiliates here.

All of the sites you've seen with ESPN advertising above, all have advertising deals that outsource the selling of ads on their site to others. All of these outsourced ad companies require very basic documents that allow your traffic numbers to be part of their umbrella network numbers that ad agencies look at to help guide ad buying decisions. These documents are standard practice and nobody really requires them unless they are selling your ads.

But that's not the case with ESPN. They require you to leave any existing premuim advertising agreement you already have or give up the right to enter one in the future.  ESPN simply aggregates all their affiliate's traffic numbers and rolls them up to their total number and that's what ad agencies look at. The end result is a number inflated by blogger's hard work. The higher number helps attract ad buys..... buys that go on espn.com and not to any of the bloggers sites.  ESPN refuses to offer any substantive advertising package for any affiliate sites. I have heard they offered to try to sell ads on some larger sites, but it was more of a ploy to get certain sites signed up.

In a nutshell, you're helping ESPN sell their own ads, you're not allowed to sells yours , and when ESPN themselves feels like throwing some bucks around, they're not going to figure out a way for you get any of those dollars.

Their defense for requiring advertising network documents is that it will help them track the growth of the network as whole. If that were true, they'd use Google Analytics, Site Meter, Quantcast, and not unreliable panel tracking systems that are only relevant to ad agencies.

The truth is that Yahoo Sports  leaped over ESPN in terms of total audience size online in 2007 when they purchased the Rivals network and it probably took suits at ESPN awhile before they realized that it was effecting their ad sales. Hmmm.... if Yahoo leveraged a publisher network to get the upper hand, then why not do the same except not by means of an acquisition or any real substantive partnership? Why not just offer a partnership based 100% on pimping ESPN's brand and not based on technology, platform, advertising, content promotion, and hosting?

I think some of this was just arrogance. ESPN must have laughed off Yahoo Sports at first and could you blame them? An upstart internet company on the West Coast, whose main business was search advertising.. Yahoo couldn't be a threat right? But Yahoo's best in class fantasy sports offerings, growing stable of traditional sports writers, the acquisition of Rivals, prowless at SEO, and Jamie Mottram's growing sports blog empire served as a fatal recipe that saw ESPN not only passed by Yahoo but also having that lead grow for years. Yahoo also just acquired Citizen Sports for a reported 50-60 million dollars, so it looks like Yahoo has already beat them to the next frontier on Facebook and mobile phones. Maybe ESPN shouldn't have adopted a strategy of trying to figure out how to optimize playing auto play videos bracketed with ads on seemingly every page and rather looked to the greater web for some ways to reclaim their top standing.

This leads us to today where Rob Neyer can't fill out his network, the college football network is on the verge of imploding per multiple sources, network sites can't monetize effectively nor gain access to ESPN's own ad spend, and then there is this kicker below.

Most network sites don't or potentially are not allowed to run any ads (or at least premuim ads) as you can see above. But what you do see is ESPN's video player which is required on many network sites playing a Jim Beam commercial. News flash: Pre roll 15-30 second video commercials pays A LOT better than typical banner ads. Although its not obvious to the trained eye, ESPN is actually running lucrative advertising programs camouflaged as additional content for network sites and I am sure you can guess by now who is pocketing this ad money.

I don't really enjoy the role of calling attention to some of these details, but its painfully glaring to me just how ill conceived ESPN's foray into external networks has been. I'd also like to point out that around the new year, long before I ever voiced my displeasure here, I did multiple calls and exchanged dozens of emails with the folks at ESPN on this very topic to little avail.

While you could maybe consider my opinion to be that of bitter competitor to ESPN, I think you'd also have to take into consideration that I've written at large about the online sports space and generally write very positive pieces that span companies like Yardbarker, FSV, FanSided, Fox Sports, Watercooler Sports, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation.

In the end, ESPN's motives are pretty clearly murky at best and bloggers are suffering the price and getting a raw deal.  You don't have to take my word for it as below is part of email I received from an ESPN affiliate who came to the realization that ESPN's network provided no value and was actually costing him money.

"I've been clamping my tongue at how much of a joke their SweetSpot network is. They just want to be able to say they have a network and get the traffic credit from the already built in traffic. They don't try to send traffic our ways, they don't pay -- even on a rev split basis --, they don't host (so I actually lost money making the move)... it just doesn't make sense."

I think the most obvious remedy to all of this is either paying bloggers flat fees if ESPN didn't want to roll up the sleeves to figure out how to run ads on network sites. The other option is running ads on network affiliates and when a advertiser (say Nike, EA, or Gatorade) didn't have an ad to display, ESPN could fill the unsold inventory with house ads promoting their shows, upcoming games, etc.

The network model described above has actually been adopted by Canada's The Score Network and has been quite successful attracting bloggers to sign up, building awareness for The Score's programming, and also attracting advertisers who are excited about available blog inventory. At this point this is an obvious move, but I think the poor saps at ESPN in charge of these type of efforts would probably look a little passe in offering up these ideas in 2010 when they should have been explored around 2006 or at very least when Yahoo got the jump on ESPN in 2007.

Time will tell if sense and innovative thinking will prevail over arrogance and stubbornness, but given the track record and the having personal knowledge of some of the individuals over at ESPN, I think we'll continue to see more of the same. To quote one industry person "ESPN doesn't think its a good idea, unless they came up with it."

Its been a very newsworthy month over at Bleacher Report although a lot of the news has flown under the radar.

Today they announced that former head of Yahoo Sports and later Fox Sports, Brian Grey, will be joining the team in July as CEO. Bleacher Report has been without a CEO since February when Dan Kelly departed the company after less than a year at the helm. Grey is a hell of hire and one I actually predicted back in early April. Below is something I dug up in my gmail that I sent to an industry contact.

Also have you heard of the name of Brian Grey? I have a meeting with him next week. Used to run, Yahoo Sports and then later Fox Sports. I think its plausible he could be joining B/R in the CEO role. Heard some things.

What I had heard was that Brian was looking to get back into an operational role after more than a year as an Entrepenuer in Residence at Polaris Ventures. When I did meet Brian he confirmed this and I mentioned that the Bleacher Report CEO role was open to which he shrugged off with a convincing poker face.

In many cases when a EIR leaves a VC, it can be in conjunction with a round of investment in the company the EIR is joining. While Bleacher Report has not announced funding in conjunction with this move, it's something to keep an eye on. Bleacher Report's last funding per crunchbase was $3 million a year ago.

Bleacher Report has a great young founding team pictured below who will definitely lean on Grey for his experience scaling large sports properties, optimizing ad revenue, and how to chip away at ESPN.

[Business Week]

Grey could be considered a hitter or ringer or whatever dorky title you want to give him and is a very comparable hire Jim Bankoff at SB Nation. Frankly speaking I don't know if I could dream up a better pedigree. His resume includes:

- a MBA at UCLA
- Experience at MLB
- Almost 2 years working on Nike's digital business
- 2 years at AOL on the content side and doing some business development for sports content.
- Dot.com war stories at Shutterfly
- Heading Yahoo Sports
- Heading Fox Sports
- Nearly 2 Years at a top tier VC.

In a nutshell Grey has worked on the digital side at one of sport's premier sponsors, experience on the league side, a stint at the largest internet company in it's prime, startup experience, VC experience, as well as running two of the top three sports entities not named ESPN. Needless to say the Bleacher Report team is in great hands and their investors must be ecstatic that they have someone very well suited to steer the company to a lucrative exit.

But the hiring of Grey is not the only big news flying under the radar. While digging around on their site, I came across this press release from a couple weeks back going over new protocols for writers looking to join Bleacher Report.

“We've formally moved away from an instant publication model, and all new writers are now required to submit an application before they publish on Bleacher Report,” explains Vice President of Content and Co-Founder David Finocchio. “Applicants who live up to our more rigorous 2010 editorial standards are accepted. Those who don’t are invited to continuing working on their writing and analysis, and apply again in the future. Exclusivity is based on the bar set by our 700 top writers.”

"In sum, the new policy is intended to elevate Bleacher Report’s reputation as a source of high-quality content, which will in turn increase the prestige that accrues to each of the site’s individual writers."

I found this kind of odd as I hadn't heard about this and just saw some of the Bleacher Report guys at BWB3 and don't believe this was mentioned on their panel. Maybe I just missed some of the buzz about this strategic change, but the change in policy may have purposely been a muted a bit.

Given there has been some negative chatter about Bleacher Report's former open platform model (some instances of plagiarism, low quality content, and false rumors), changing to an application model is a smart move but one that admits that the former model had some flaws. This is a huge change for them as lower quality writers will apparently be left on the outside of the community in hopes that the brand's image can regain credibility.

Overall I think both moves were well warranted. Bleacher Report is definitely a hot commodity and while the founding team is extremely sharp, Grey's experience and connections should do wonders in scaling the business and most likely selling it down the road. The new community application system will take time before it pays its dividends but is a worthwhile move.  Regardless Bleacher Report will most likely still continue to have to fight a two sided war against the blogosphere as well as traditional media who they compete with for writing talent, ad dollars, and page views.

With great technology, a massive writing community, ridiculous SEO, a popular newsletter, many mainstream media partnerships, and now Grey, its quite possible Bleacher report has all the ammo they need to be the first content based Sports 2.0 company to find itself acquired by a larger media company.

No intro really needed. Enjoy!

This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending Blogs With Balls 3 in Chicago. Really enjoyed myself at the conference and wanted to write up some thoughts about the experience as well as some positive and negative feedback about the event.

I attended the first event and thought it was a great success. Getting sponsors, a venue, and some of the biggest names in the sports blogosphere to all support such an ambitious event was truly a landmark achievement and you have to applaud the event organizers Kyle Bunch, Chris Lucas, and Don Povia for pulling it off. Below is a video I did with Kyle as oddly enough we shared a flight back to the Bay Area after the conference. I think he actually was the seat in front of me and is now knowledgeable about the odd sounds emitted by a sleep deprived Chinese Jew.

BWB 2 I had to miss but I heard good things. I think the sentiment was that the event was hindered by the fact it was part of the larger BlogWorld Expo convention. Many sports 2.0 organizations had tried and mostly failed to have an informative, intimate, and well attended sports track at BWE. The BWB guys broke through to some degree but I think they really feel an independent event could have been better.

So considering BWB1 and BWB 2 were both events with unforeseen challenges, you could say BWB3 was really the first event of the series you could really take a deep look at the value, execution, planning, and content of the event. Here is what I came up with:

Location/Timing-

June in Chicago was a great idea. 3rd event in about 12 months felt about right. I think having an event about every 8 months going forward would be the right balance. Loved the Midwest location and the fact that Chicago has a very solid base of bloggers that were out in full force and were great hosts.

The Wrigley Club I think was a cool idea and fit with the sports theme, but unfortunately presented some mild logistical issues. Pros included lots of area to talk and chat outside the venue, historic and central location, and an easy accessible bar with some memorable bartenders.

Unfortunately though the semi outdoor location (under an overhang with curtains duct taped to it) presented some distractions ranging from loud rain, sirens, general street noise, and some modest humidity. Given I was a bit overdressed, a little hungover, and a big guy to start with, the humidity combined with some cheap chairs made it a bit uncomfortable at times. The curtains kept falling off the overhang awhich led to there just being more noise and a lot of distractions if you're in the business of people watching like I am.

In the end I think it "felt" right but its drawbacks made the event less enjoyable too many.

Panels/Content

The BWB guys here have a tall task every event. Drum up interest in speakers across this vast space, fit them into panels, and have an event flow with informative and entertaining content to a very diverse audience. I helped put on 2 conferences back at a job which seems ages ago and getting the agenda right was just a nightmare of an assignment, but the most pivotal to the event.

I am not going to do a breakdown of each panel (hell if you're that interested check out the whole conference on Justin.tv).

Looking back I really enjoyed a lot of the panels and thought there were some great panelists that I wanted to see. However one thing that stood out was how cookie cutter the schedule was. 6 panels, all the same amount of time, with a moderator, and with 4 or 5 panelists.

I think a lot of the content was actually muted a bit by the aforementioned street noise, distractions, etc but also just a predictable pace and format that zonked out many. Having the 6 panels all following the same template seemed to just weigh down the atmosphere and attentiveness of the crowd considerably.

A lot of the panels were really good but hindered a bit by either 1-3 panelists that didn't add much or were just bad fits. In some cases certain moderator just didn't really maximize the time and discussion. No names need to be mentioned but I think about 50% of the moderators and panelists get A or B grades, while 20% got a C, and maybe 30% or so really missing the mark.

Next go around I would maybe go with smaller panels and maybe tighter sessions. Also some more multimedia, keynotes, and comedic stylings of Spencer Hall would have helped break up the 7 hour event.

In the end I think the 6 topics were good choices and many of them get high marks. I would have liked to see a panel with all of the bloggers who have recently found employment via the sale of their blog entity (Basketball Jones, The Big Lead, EDSBS, The 700 Level). Although some details are probably confidential, I think a lot of bloggers want to know how to get to a finish line as well as know how those developments unfolded.

There has been a bunch of chatter about some of the panels in particular (see here and here). Rather than blab about some of these issues that have been covered at length, I'll say that having these genuine and passionate discussions unfolding at BWB is only further evidence that these events provide value for the space as a whole. Credibility, accountability, profitability, legality and morality were all touched upon and debated and in the end you're not going to have these frank discussions without BWB.

Also found it wierd that there was a decent sized gap in between the end of the conference and the after party. Some people seemed kind of torn about attending the after party or just calling it a day. The gap provided some people a chance to put their feet up and in many cases we lost a lot of attendees as they were a bit worn out after a long day.

Sponsors

Great lineup of sponsors. A pair of open bar parties bracketing the event (thanks Yardbarker and Bleacher Report). Proctor and Gamble really stepping up and showing interest in the space. Wish some of the giveaways they provided for the attendees could have been brought back on a carry on bag (had to trash some shampoo and shaving cream at the airport) but it was nice gesture and they got a lot of nice activation and PR at the event.

Justin TV provided a lot of value with the streaming and video archiving. SBN took care of lunch and Jeremiah Weed gave us a midday buzz. Unfortunately for me there were some minor issues here.

I was in the bathroom when they explained that Jeremiah Weed was giving out complimentary Sweet Teas (Arnold Palmers with Vodka in them...aka John Daly's). I grabbed one with my lunch, put down another when a waitress swung by with more. I thought Jeremiah Weed was some brewery I didn't know and that the Arnold Palmers were the non alcoholic alternative drink. Given I was a tad hungover from the night before, it was humid, and I went long sleeve with jeans, I was looking to hydrate.

While talking to some blogger folks I had another 2. It was midway through the first panel of the afternoon that I inquired if there was booze in the drinks. Definitely slowed me down a bit, but more just a comical cautionary tale.

Highlights

I really enjoyed the conference because I got to reconnect with some folks as well as make some new connections and contacts.  Probably going to leave some people out but really enjoyed catching up with Jim Bankoff (thanks for the on stage shout out), Diana Klochova, Joe Fortenbaugh, Alana Nguyen, Spencer Hall, Trei Brundrett, Brian Cook, Dave Nemetz, JE Skeets, Tas Melas, Eamonn Brennan, Ryan Corazza, Tom Fornelli, Adam Best, and Enrico Campitelli Jr.

Really enjoyed meeting Jason Priestas, Gene Zarnick, Zach Harper, Ed Maisonet, Zach Best, Trey Kirby, Matt Olsteen, and Ian Sohn who gave me a nice shout out on his blog. Thoroughly enjoyed fellow Buckeyes Robert Littal and Josh Zerkle (awesome guy) who both did fantastic jobs on their panels and that's not me being a homer.

Can't leave out the organizers, Kyle, Don, and Chris for another successful event.

Personally the juice was well worth the squeeze for this event and I got to rub elbows with a lot of great people and had a lot of substnative dicussions about this space and my company in particular.

Going Forward

Some chatter of BWB going to the South next go around. Austin seemed to be a strong contender. This space definitely needs a meeting of the minds 1-2x a year and they've really crafted this event to fill that void.

At the same token the success of the event and the rise of sports blogging is attracting a more diverse crowd with various experience and connections to the space. Also the organizers seem to have a lot of new exciting things in both their careers and personal lives.

You'd really like to see BWB4 be something special especially as developments within the space seem to be unfolding at an accelerated rate. BWB is a great concept with a great team and I look forward to see what the next one will bring as I have high expectations for the event but more importantly sports blogging as whole in the next 6-9 months. Hopefully a large part of that will be from my company and we'll be one of the many big things that may unfold in the second half of 2010.

I'll update this blog as more information becomes available.

Early this morning, The New York Times reported that general sports and gossip blog, The Big Lead had been acquired by their ad sales partner, Fantasy Sports Ventures, or as most people refer to them, FSV.

The Big Lead, an independent blog that Jason McIntyre began as a hobby, is fixated on sports media, news and gossip. Along the way, it has built a devoted, if not huge, social media following.

Now, a buyer has established a value for the blog by acquiring it for a figure in the low seven figures.....

The Big Lead is in some ways a tamer, cleaner version of Deadspin, the occasionally ferocious, often ribald sports Web site that is owned by Gawker Media, and also fascinated by ESPN.

It's funny because I actually was told this information by someone at FSV but didn't know the actual publisher in question. I almost dismissed the possibility of it being big news just because of how nonchalantly it was brought up and perceived the news to be more minor and involving some type of influential niche publisher and not a mainstream well known entity like the The Big Lead.

Fantasy Sports Ventures has been a bit quiet the past 9 months but that's not to say they haven't been making a lot of progress. They run the Fantasy Players Network, a collection of hundreds of websites that they run advertising programs for.

Many companies are in this business, but FSV is distinct in a couple of ways. Foremost they've seemed to tilt their publisher list mostly towards fantasy sports sites in addition to having a dozen or so properties that they have acquired over the years. Most vertical ad networks/rep firms, have shied away from buying publishers but FSV has made this a strategic point of emphasis and has a lot of capital allocated from their funding from Gannett just for this purpose.

FSV is also quite a bit larger than some of its startup brethren in terms of overall audience size across the network (15-17 million Comscore), reported revenue (8 figures), and size of sales team (double digits). Also the company is based in New York City with a lot of its team coming from the NFL and other mainstream league and media companies, a stark contrast to other vertical ad networks.

The Big Lead had over 3 million page views a month with somewhere around 500,000 unique visitors although the article didn't provide a number. The article doesn't cite a fixed acquisition price but indicates its low 7 figures so I'd say you're looking around 2 million bucks.

Although The Big Lead at times was a polarizing website, it was definitely a top 5 general sports blog in terms of audience, community interaction, content, and influence. You can argue that Deadspin being a part of Gawker and AOL's Fanhosue would probably give the crown to the The Big Lead and Sports By Brooks as largest independent General sports blogs.

After a pretty quiet albeit successful 2009, FSV emerges making a big splash with this acquisition as they've been seemingly more focused on fantasy news and not as much sports blogs. It remains to be seen how this changes things for them going forward but its definitely a bold move that adds more momentum behind sports blogs.

2009 closed out with a bang as AOL and NBC added some known sports specific sites. In fact, NBC's web strategy is now centered around mirroring the success of Pro Football Talk. EDSBS was acquired by SBN which has seemingly only empowered Spencer Hall to craft dynamic content/shenanigans/debauchery like only he can.

2010 has seen The Basketball Jones join the The Score and The 700 Level gobbled up by Comcast Sports Net. Suddenly the idea of individial blogs profiting with real exits, doesn't seem so crazy. A year ago there just wasn't a precedent for this, now its slowly becoming a trend for larger media companies.

You have to wonder what's the next domino to fall and what other buyers are going to make a bold move now that a handful of companies have taken the plunge.

Congrats to Jason and the team for making this happen. I am sure its been a lot of sweat equity, long nights, and blurry eyes. Also some great timing as Blogs With Balls this weekend will have even more fodder. Speaking of, be sure to say hello if you're a reader or just an attractive female stalker (my mom would prefer if you were Jewish though FYI).

As you know for the last 9 months, I've been diligently killing myself serving as Bloguin's CEO. It's no easy task and I think some of you industry insiders who read my blog can probably imagine the work that goes into maintaining and growing a blog network with no investment capital.

Often its quite a mentally taxing but along the way its good to take pride in certain accomplishments along the way. Below are some that I'm particularly proud of.

So what's this screenshot? Two things actually. First I recently noticed that some of our writers have added additional writing positions and gigs. No jealous girlfriend syndrome here. The logos you see in the screenshot above are places we have writers doing part time work. These are not companies that are just linking to or discussing our writers and sites, but places that feature our writers. Very impressive.

The other thing this screenshot shows is the tremendous ad performance/targeting we have achieved of late. If you look above you'll see we have ads on that page from ESPN and Nike. Having mainstream brands have ads on your site is nothing to brag about, but these two advertisers are perfectly targeted to our network and are paying great rates to Bloguin and our publishers. In fact as May winds down it looks like 40% of our ads will have been filled with ads from ESPN, Nike, Gatorade, Wheaties, and MasterCard. That's just a tremendous accomplishment and something that takes a lot of work behind the scenes. A quick looks shows we also had a good portion of ads from Versus earlier in the month promoing the hockey playoffs.

Another sign of our success can be found in this screenshot below.

What you're looking at here is how large Bloguin's network audience is over the last 30 days. A year ago it was a hair of 200,000 unique visitors. This month its over 900,000 and you have to take into consideration 90% of the NHL and NBA are no longer playing and the NFL and most major college sports are out of season. This is essentially a slow time for us..... but its not.

You could credit a lot of different factors for that, but at the end of the day our writers are the most critical component of Bloguin's growth. To that I say thank you for all your hard work. Our team is grinding hard and earning well deserved promotion from SI's Hot Clicks, Deadspin, Twitter, print publications, and experiencing organic growth as well. In fact we've even had some of our sites promoted on television like this clip from today.

Larry at Wezen Ball is just an unbelievably talented and creative writer. I am consistently wowed by his work but he is just one of many people who I am proud to be working with and thankful for their commitment in Bloguin.

Over the past year, online local sports audiences has escalated from a competitive hobby for media companies into an emerging front line of trench warfare. As ESPN expands their local aspirations with more regional hub sites, regional sports networks like Comcast SportsNET, Fox Sports Net, NESN, and MASN have felt some urgency to expand and fortify their online offerings. This may be in hopes of fencing off future ESPN forays into local markets or maybe even hoping to discourage ESPN entirely from entering certain local markets.

It was about a week ago, I ventured over to CSNBayarea.com to give it a once over. They've been heavily promoting their site and some of the big names they've added to their team during broadcasts of local games and I wanted to give the site a more thorough look. CSN Bay Area is one of a handful of former Fox affiliates who have switched affiliations over the last couple of years.

At first glance I was modestly impressed by the layout, content, usability, etc, but what really caught my eye was this widget below.

If you click around more, you'll find team widgets for SB Nation also populating the team pages. A quick glance at other CSN sites confirmed this wasn't an one-off arrangement with similar SB Nation promotion occurring on other CSN sites. In return CSN hub sites get promotion on SB Nation sites that are part of CSN's regional coverage. SB Nation has had a banner year working these syndication agreements as you can see below.

SB Nation certainly is offering great return value with these linking partners but most likely another contributing factor to these agreements getting done can be attributed to the warm relationships in place between these larger media companies and SB Nation's CEO, Jim Bankoff.

I wanted to wait until some formal press came out about this partnership as I often do when I stumble upon some news in this niche (maybe I should have a premium subscriber breaking news option?) and didn't have to wait long to read about it in this week's Sports Business Journal.

SB Nation’s bloggers will appear on Comcast SportsNet’s TV shows and local websites through a content-sharing deal recently signed by the two sides.

Each operation will carry the other’s breaking news and analysis in the markets where they operate together, including Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia, Chicago and Northern California. CSN talent also will appear in some SB Nation blogs.

The two outfits will roll out an extensive cross-promotional partnership in other markets over the next year. CSN has locally based digital news operations in eight markets, including Boston and New York.

The article also noted that no cash is involved in this partnership and both entities will continue to sell its own ad inventory.

On the outside this doesn't look like much of a development but I am sure other insiders will tell you this is significant move by both companies.

Fox Sports has been shedding regional affiliates, Comcast has been adding them, and SB Nation's reach has grown considerably. Meanwhile ESPN has leveraged their multi platform promotional abilities to let the whole world know that they are getting into local as well.

Newspapers and sites like Examiner.com and Chicago Now are packed with content but still low on reach and with mild traction and expertise selling digital local inventory.

ESPN in a way is creating buzz, demand, and awareness about this space which will likely become a mature industry over the next couple years. If it weren't for ESPN going the local route, I think you'd see a much more paced call to arms on the local sports digital front.

My first thought is will Comcast actually put bloggers on television? If so how often will we see that or was it more just high level hyperbole?

The other striking thing that stands out is this really strengthens the relationship between Comcast and SB Nation. If you recall, it was Comcast's capital arm that was the lead investor in SB Nation's last round of investment.

While nothing has happened between the two companies since the investment announcement (almost a year ago), Comcast has really been busy in the sports space. 2 months ago they purchased The 700 Level to anchor blog style coverage for Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia. Comcast has also been very active and somewhat creative in looking to grow Versus to become a more viable competitor to ESPN.

The big move though was acquiring NBC Universal which would give them a broadcast channel in NBC with sports offerings to further cross promote Versus and digital offerings. NBC also bought Pro Football Talk and has launched similar blogs for other sports similar to Yahoo Sports Blogs. If the  acquisition passes through regulators Comcast would  essentially have an equity stake in SB Nation (working closely with CSN now), more than a handful of RSN's broadcasing a multitude of live pro sports games in different markets, Versus and NBC who both share NHL hockey rights, some big name blogs like Pro Football Talk and The 700 Level, and a lot of legacy broadcast rights from NBC in addition the well liked Bob Costas (put me down for a man crush).

It's not hard to envision the SB Nation- Comcast partnership setting the groundwork for bigger things down the road especially if The 700 Level and Pro Football Talk moves are deemed to be successul ventures for Comcast/NBC.

I think the most logical next step would be a sales partnership between SBN and Comcast. Next time you catch a ball game on a local RSN or even just sports talk radio, keep a keen eye or eat out for for how many local advertisers are buying ad inventory.

Maybe its a car dealership, a local bar and grill, a limo service, hotel, etc, but these local companies look to connect with sports fan during television and radio broadcasts of local teams. At some point they'll begin to get more active buying online, but how natural/easy would it be for a Comcast sales representative to just utter the words "Would you also like to buy some ad inventory on CSNBayArea.com as well the largest _insert team___ blog on the web?

Local advertisers are calling local radio and television stations yet online publishers no matter how localized aren't really getting a steady flow of those calls. I am proud to say Bloguin has actually booked a pretty substantial amount of revenue the past couple of months on the local front, but its still nowhere at the level it will be in a couple of years as these advertisers get more savvy to online.

With Yahoo being another strong candidate for a SB Nation acquisition, you have to wonder if they'll throttle the acqusition pace down a bit after picking up Citizen Sports and Associated Content. Another school of thought is that they're really embracing the idea of being a media company and their strong position in sports doesn't rule out an acquisition just because of the recent acquisition spree.

Regardless, Comcast now imo becomes the heads on favorite to acquire SB Nation or probably more likely in the short term, double down with an unique sales partnership. While Yardbarker works with Fox and CBS works with Bleacher Report, you'd think SB Nation is thinking more about local advertising at this point more than national display.

On the flip side often things don't come together as planned. It was only a 4 years ago when Fox was riding high after buying Scout, College Football News, holding various RSN college football rights, and procuring the BCS broadcast rights. That didn't exactly work out as planned.

Either way its another positive step for sports bloggers and one that down the line could be pointed to as a pivotal development as larger media companies continue to snuggle up to the sports blogosphere.

There was a day and age (2005-2008) , where investors, entrepreneurs, and major media companies salivated at the idea of creating online media entities looking to capitalize on these two major trends:

- More and more people were spending their time online.

- More and more advertisers were shifting their advertising budgets to online.

The list of startups that were created with this in mind is stammering.

But then something happened. Below is a visual representation of the sudden shift (can't believe this is what I am going with here).

Digital media companies were seen as young, exciting, up and coming companies with lots of potential and room to grow.

But as ad budgets got cut, venture money disappeared, the field crowded, and some of these companies strayed away from technology and innovation the rosy outlook turned ominous.  The new perception was that they were too vain, high maintenance, desperate for money and PR, unhealthy, and overly inflated.

2009 was a tough year and many companies had to change direction, downsize, refocus their business, and in some cases go out out business.

Fast forward to today though and it seems digital media companies are coming back and in a big way.

As AOL pushes all in with their content strategy, Glam Media mobilizes for a possible IPO, The Huffington Post looks to pass The New York Times, and Demand Media shoots for a billion dollar IPO, big news came out today that only reaffirmed Digital Media's comeback.

Yahoo announced its acquisition of Associated Content to the tune of $100 million and Tsavo Media got swooped by CyberPlex for $75 million.

Associated Content is a hub site that publishes content from a network of freelance journalists who get get a revenue share of content produced. Tsavo Media which launched less than a year and a half ago is a collection of themed websites and blogs who was aggressive in M&A and now finds themselves with a very impressive exit.

All of this bodes well for the pack of startups hungry to find an acquisition. Frankly speaking I think the recession has ate away at the stomach of entrepreneurs who in better times may have been more steadfast in staying independent for longer.

With positive signs spanning across ad networks, content farms, as well as content/platform networks, there is certainly a second wind of optimism that indeed digital media may be worthy of the buzz and hype that was bestowed upon it in the middle half of the prior decade.

I'd look for movement on this front while keeping an eye on AOL and Yahoo who seem to be really putting the foot down on the accelerator on this front. In the sport's world some interesting things could shake out in 2010 for Bleacher Report, Yardbarker, SB Nation, Bloguin, and even individual niche blogs as companies like Comcast (owner of Versus and soon NBC), Fox, ESPN, Yahoo, CBS, and AOL look to bolster their online offerings. Also traditional print outlets like Sports Illustrated and Sporting News have hinted of having some interest on the M&A front, although its probably more of a long shot at this point.

Either way the old saying "Content is King"may end up proving true on the new frontier of online.