Paid Content is reporting that Yahoo is about to close the acquisition of Rivals.com, a college sports network for around $100 million. This would be Yahoo´s biggest sports acquisition after Broadcast.com. One exec is reporting that the price tag of $50-75 million would be more reasonable, because FIM paid $60 million for Scout Media in September 2005, which is a similar service.
The acquisition will really boost Yahoo Sports which has been trying to catch up with ESPN and FoxSports. Rivals also supplies content to USAToday, AOL Sports, Sporting News, MSNBC and SI. Brentwood, Tennessee based Rivals was founded in 2001. The startup burned more than $75 million in VC funding during the dotcom era, and the assets were made available through a forced liqiuidation. The complete history of Rivals is available here.
