TalkSports is a user-generated sports site run by Rapid Spiral Development that has attracted controversy because of gossip and photos contributed by users about the private lives of professional athletes. [1] [2] The web site contains forums for every major sport athlete where fans can discuss, post pictures and links. "We get a lot of comments about players cheating or whether he has a big or small you-know-what," site publisher Randy Charles Morin told The Globe and Mail. [1] The website was featured in the Washington Post [3] and Canoe.ca [4] websites.
Morin began the site after a blog post he wrote about hockey player Sidney Crosby in 2005 received a comment from a female asking whether Crosby had a girlfriend. He said in an interview with Drama Scene Live Radio, "Google immediately picked up that new comment and within a few days that page was getting 1,000 hits per day. And I thought, I've got an idea ..." [5]
A 2014 profile of the site in ESPN the Magazine called its visual design "anachronistic, like an Angelfire page that was never snuffed out." [2]
TalkSports is often the target of legal challenges by sports athletes and their agents, with Morin telling ESPN he's received lawsuit threats "several hundred times." [2] Some of the threats include:
Morin said he has given hundreds of athletes free site memberships that allow them to delete comments. [2]