| Analysis: McClatchy Pact Opens Door to Yahoo ‘a la Carte’
The WSJ is reporting that McClatchy, the publisher of 30 newspapers, is set to be the 12th newspaper publisher to join the Yahoo consortium, leaving behind Gannett and Tribune, which had hoped to work with McClatchy to build an alternative national ad network. Meanwhile, The L.A. Times reports that Yahoo has agreed to provide prominent links on section fronts for Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Finance to consortium members in exchange for their implementation of the Yahoo search box (and everything else).. It has previously been whispered that the consortium is working with Yahoo on a used cars portal. McClatchy is still tied to Gannett and Tribune via its stake in CareerBuilder, so it won’t be using HotJobs. It is also a partner in Classified Ventures, which owns cars.com, so it isn’t clear to what extent it can work with Yahoo on autos.
Yahoo Sports Close to Acquiring Rivals.com
Yahoo is close to acquiring college sports network rivals.com, its biggest sports acquisition since Broadcast.com, reports paidContent.org. The price could reach an estimated $100 million, which is overpriced according to paidContent: "One exec involved in online sports acquisitions told us $50-75 million would be more realistic given a model that can - and has been - replicated." But the acquisition would be a boost to Yahoo Sports, which has been looking for ways to catch up with ESPN.com and deal with FoxSports.com. Yahoo already has a sports-content sharing deal with Rivals.com, which also supplies content to USAToday.com, AOL Sports, SportingNews.com, MSNBC.com and SI.com. .
HP and Yahoo Sports rally March Madness fans
Hewlett-Packard has teamed up with Yahoo Sports to create an interactive Web site aimed at engaging college basketball fans in the March Madness excitement. Fans can visit HP Courtside 07 for game scores and to interact with other fans on Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Answers and Flickr. Yahoo is also sponsoring a promotion, The Maddest Bracket Contest, where fans can enter to win HP products and up to $1 million by picking the winning teams. This is an effort to reach basketball fans in an HP-branded environment that has the latest in Web 2.0 offerings, said Mary Bermel, director of interactive advertising and emerging media at HP, Palo Alto, CA. As much as fans love to watch television, theyre also spending a lot of time online to find out about their favorite teams.
Taking care of local sports fields adds to city costs
Parents are fuming after a fair sized portion of the city's field maintenance budget was slashed as a cost cutting measure by city hall. A similar amount of money was removed from the budget in 2003 and city residents have been complaining about the state of the citys sports fields since that time.
Resident Karen Parker, who has two sons involved in the Westfall Soccer League says that by the end of this years soccer season the soccer fields in the city were little more than mud patches.
"It was embarrassing to have kids come in from other cities and have to play on our miserable fields"said Ms. Parker. "All these other cities have beautiful facilities, its part of a citys pride to have good sports facilities."
Adding this cost back into the budget means an estimated property tax increase in the six percent range as the budget debate begins at city hall next week.
Yahoo! Wants to get Closer to Teenage Boys
When there's money to be made, lots of things become mainstream. In the past two years, the sports media industry has recognized the importance -- but especially the money to be made -- in paying attention to college recruiting. At the same time, there seems to be a wariness at embracing the recruiting sites too closely.ESPN created its Scouts, Inc. group to track recruiting and evaluate high school talent for football and now basketball. With the weight of the 800 pound gorilla in sports media behind it, to cross-promote on ESPN.com and the various TV channels, it has gained prominence. All the while, though, the whole recruiting venture is treated like a separate company that is merely a contractor for ESPN.Fox Interactive Media bought Scout.com in August 2005. The price tag was a reported $60 million.
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