Bleacher Report purchase set to revolutionize sports following

In a move that is sure to give a shot in the arm to various web-based startups across the world, Bleacher Report, an online network of sports blogs based in San Francisco, was purchased by Turner Broadcasting System on Monday. The purchase has come as rich reward for the site’s four co-founders, who first became friends at Atherton’s Menlo Middle School. The exact terms of the deal were not disclosed, but financial research firm PrivCo said Turner paid $175 million in cash.

Bleacher Report employs 135 people, maintaining offices in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, and has roughly 2000 featured contributors, who are mainly fans who write about their favourite teams and sports, as a hobby. The sale to Atlanta-based Turner garners enormous exposure for Bleacher, through the Turner Sports network of television and online outlets, including the CNN, TNT and TBS cable networks. Turner Sports already manages the websites of the NBA, NCAA and PGA and oversees ad sales for NASCAR.com. The sites have a combined reach of 86 million visitors a month.

In exchange, Bleacher Report provides Turner access to a growing online and mobile outlet with a loyal following. Since its launch in 2008, Bleacher Report has surpassed stalwarts such as FoxSports.com and SI.com to become the third-most-visited sports news destination online, according to comScore.

Bleacher Report uses slideshow and list-driven articles, search-engine friendly headlines, e-mail newsletters and “gamification” gaming techniques, and has amassed more than 900 million page views per month. The company’s growing foothold, easy publishing platform, and highly rated mobile apps drew Turner in.

“When we go after sports broadcasting rights, you also get digital rights,” said David Levy, president of sales, distribution and sports at Turner Broadcasting. “Bleacher Report could be a great way to monetize those rights across all platforms.”

Turner has been looking to expand beyond its broadcast and online networks, said Jaime Spencer, vice-president at business consultancy Frank N. Magid Associates.

“What they really haven’t had is news content,” he said. “You need more content that can fill in the gaps between those live events to have more comprehensive coverage all year.”

Bleacher Report is one of many such fan-driven networks which provide a platform for enthusiastic fans to air their view while also accepting syndication and contributions from professional writers. Of course, social media coverage and other outreach options are provided as part of the package.

This move by Turner is the latest in a series of indications that web portals based on crowd-sourcing have a huge market that has largely been untapped so far. Fan-driven content can often be more appealing to ordinary followers of a particular field than content spouted by a team of armchair experts, and nowhere is that reflected more vividly than in the field of sports. A platform that allows users to express their passion and bias with some measure of freedom is clearly an idea that is simply waiting to take off in a big way.

Sportskeeda is an Indian network which functions similarly to Bleacher Report. In addition to the above features, Sportskeeda also has regular news articles, and the site covers most of the big sporting events in detail. Live event coverage is something that the Bleacher Report lacks, but is one of the strong points of Sportskeeda, as evidenced by the site’s extensive coverage of the London Olympics.

While not only maintaining interaction on India’s most active Olympics-based Facebook page, ‘Team India for Olympics 2012″, Sportskeeda also maintains a live update-cum-discussion forum on its own website during events featuring Indian participation.

While Sportskeeda’s readership numbers are not quite at the level of Bleacher Report yet, the growth patterns of the two sites have been somewhat similar. Particularly in the last six months or so, Sportskeeda’s reach has increased exponentially, with the readership numbers swelling by the day.

With a fantasy game also raring to go, Sportskeeda is ahead of most of its peers, and is arguably India’s biggest portal of its kind. What happens in the future remains to be seen, but things are looking very good!