Rivals.com

Last updated

Rivals.com
Yahoo!RivalsLogo.png
Type of site
Sports recruiting information
Available inEnglish
Owner Yahoo! Inc.
URL www.rivals.com
CommercialYes
RegistrationDepending on individual usage
LaunchedNovember 4, 1998;25 years ago (1998-11-04) [1]
Current statusOnline

Rivals.com (stylized as rivals) is a network of websites that focus mainly on college football and basketball recruiting in the United States. The network was started in 1998 and employs more than 300 personnel. [2]

Contents

History

Rivals.com was founded in 1998 by Jim Heckman in Seattle, Washington, with a cadre of outside investors. [3] Heckman was once the son-in-law of Don James, the former head football coach at the University of Washington, where Heckman attended school and was later involved in a recruiting scandal. [4] Initial deriving revenue solely from advertising, Rivals.com later employed a subscription fee of $10.00 per month to users for access to the latest recruiting news and to participate in various message boards dedicated to schools covered by the network. Rivals was funded by money from venture capital firms including the venture funds of Fox and Intel.

Rivals acquired AllianceSports, a regional network that primarily covered college sports in the Southeast of the United States, in January 2000. [5] At its peak, Rivals.com employed close to 200 people, operated a network of 700 independent websites, filed for an initial public offering worth $100 million led by Goldman Sachs, and sponsored the Hula Bowl in Hawaii. [6] However, economic troubles and the collapse of the dot-com "bubble" soon led the Rivals Network, the parent company of Rivals.com, to cease operations in 2001, though it never sought bankruptcy protection. [6] Executives from AllianceSports purchased the Rivals.com assets and subsequently relaunched the website. [7] Heckman, who had been fired as chief executive officer, later started a competitor network named The Insiders, which was later renamed Scout.com [7] and sold to Fox Interactive Media in 2005.[ citation needed ]

Led by former AllianceSports executive Shannon Terry, Rivals.com became profitable. On June 21, 2007, Yahoo! agreed to acquire Rivals.com. [8] [9] Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but several sources reported Yahoo! paid around $100 million. [10]

Rivals subscribers automatically have their subscription renewed for a term equal to the original term upon expiration of the then-current term, and continually thereafter, unless the subscriber terminates the subscription by phone at least 48 hours prior to the renewal date.[ citation needed ]

Schools

The individual collegiate sites at rivals.com can be found here (viewable only from within the United States). [11]

Schools featured at Rivals include all members of the Power Five conferences:

Rivals also has sites for all football members of the American Athletic Conference (though not for incoming non-football member Wichita State).

Conferences that have sites for some of their schools include:

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atlantic Coast Conference</span> American collegiate athletics conference

The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is a collegiate athletic conference located in the United States. Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, the ACC's fifteen member universities compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)'s Division I. ACC football teams compete in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision. The ACC sponsors competition in twenty-seven sports with many of its member institutions held in high regard nationally. Current members of the conference are: Boston College, Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Miami, North Carolina, NC State, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Virginia, Virginia Tech, and Wake Forest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Big Ten Conference</span> American collegiate athletics conference

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Conference USA</span> US college sports conference

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pac-12 Conference</span> American collegiate athletics conference

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">NCAA Division I FBS independent schools</span> Four-year institutions whose football programs are not part of an NCAA-affiliated conference

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">NCAA Division I</span> Highest division of the National Collegiate Athletic Association

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Power Five conferences</span> Group of top-level American college football conferences

The Power Five conferences are the five most prominent athletic conferences in college football in the United States. They are part of the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of NCAA Division I, the highest level of collegiate football in the nation, and are considered the most elite conferences within that tier. The Power Five conferences have provided nearly all of the participants in the College Football Playoff since its inception, and generally have larger revenue, budgets, and television viewership than other college athletic programs.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision</span> Top level of college football in the US

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Old Dominion Monarchs football</span> College football team

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">2010–12 Southeastern Conference realignment</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">247Sports</span> College sports website focused on news and recruiting

247Sports is an American network of websites that focus mainly on athletic recruitment in college football and basketball. It is owned and operated by Paramount.

ACC Network (ACCN) is an American multinational subscription-television channel owned and operated by ESPN Inc. Dedicated to coverage of the Atlantic Coast Conference, it was announced in July 2016 and launched on August 22, 2019. The channel operates from ESPN's headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut, though some programming and staff is in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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References

  1. "Rivals.com WHOIS, DNS, & Domain Info – DomainTools". WHOIS . Retrieved July 19, 2016.
  2. "Rivals.com - About Us". August 7, 2001. Archived from the original on May 9, 2012. Retrieved April 5, 2012.
  3. David Eckoff, "Seattle PI: Jim Heckman wheels, deals", Retrieved April 5, 2012
  4. ROBBINS, DANNY (February 6, 1993). "James' Son-in-Law Asked Cougar Recruit to Renege" via LA Times.
  5. "Rivals.com". alliancesports.rivals.com.
  6. 1 2 "Venture Capital: Rivals.com is dead; long live Rivals.com".
  7. 1 2 "Ex Rivals Founder Shannon Terry Looking to Challenge Rivals, Scout, and ESPN with College Recruiting Network 2.0, 24/7 Sports". www.benkoo.com.
  8. "Yahoo! Inc. - Company Timeline". Wayback Machine . July 13, 2008. Archived from the original on July 13, 2008. Retrieved July 19, 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  9. "Yahoo". Yahoo. Archived from the original on December 22, 2007. Retrieved June 21, 2007.
  10. "Adweek". www.mediaweek.com. April 4, 2022.
  11. "Lionel Messi Wife Name". sportslibro.com.