Posted in News
6 comments
10/19 2010

Yardbarker Joining FOX Sports Is Either A Big Step For, Or The End Of, Independent Sports Blogs

Posted by Dan Levy.

Two big news items in the sports blogosphere today. First, the good news that our friends at Yardbarker have signed on with Fox Sports. Here’s part of the post today from CEO Pete Vlastelica:

The decision to sell came down to this: we saw a huge opportunity to accelerate the growth of the Yardbarker brand and to expand the influence of the sports blogosphere, and we’re convinced that FOX Sports is the best partner to help make those things happen. FOX understands that the publishers in our network are doing important work to transform this business, and through this acquisition they’re committing to lead in the development of the sports blogosphere from here on.

Yardbarker will continue to operate as a standalone organization based in San Francisco. Everyone on the team will still have a job, and the four founders will all be sticking around after the deal closes – none of us has any plans to leave. We all still have a lot of work to do.

It’s the last line of his post — and the headline — that catch the most attention. First, the last: “We think this is something that everyone who cares about sports blogs and independent sports media should be very excited about.”

He’s absolutely right. This is huge. It’s a great step for the people at Yardbarker and a humungous (that word isn’t used nearly enough) milestone for our industry. Yardbarker is a content network, and as Pete mentioned, has somewhere around 800 different blogs in its network. There is value in both the number of eyeballs on those sites, and — one would like to think — the growing quality of content coming from those sites. It doesn’t matter how many sites you have if the content isn’t worth reading, and while a huge number of sports blogs are nothing more than bandwidth cloggers, there are a ton — a humungous number — that are fantastic. Yardbarker has smartly, over the years, partnered with many of those sites. This is something to be very excited about.

Let’s not forget about Pete’s headline: “A Big Step for the Independent Sports Blogosphere”

What exactly is the independent sports blogosphere, these days? Yardbarker doesn’t own most of their sites, so technically the sites are still independent. That said, Yardbarker is now owned by FOX Sports, which is part of FOX Broadcasting Corporation which is owned by News Corp. So the 800 independent bloggers who make a buck or three off their deals with Yardbarker will be getting a check in the mail stamped with Rupert Murdoch’s smiling mug. So to speak.

We’re working on a project that we plan to announce very soon — a really super huge awesome project, by the by — in which we need to determine a delineation between Mainstream Media and Independent Blog. That task has always been difficult, and with this news, becomes even more difficult. Yardbarker, itself, isn’t independent anymore, but its affiliated sites are. Is SB Nation still independent, and will that change if and when Comcast swoops in and buys up the joint? Is Bleacher Report independent? Is Deadspin?

Most of all, has this Yardbarker deal shown that there’s a giant gray area of independence in sports media these days? Your content — your direction — can remain unencumbered even if your opinions, thoughts and reporting are being bankrolled by the same company that pays Glenn Beck. That may sound like a slight, but it’s actually a really great thing.

Independent media wins on this one, even if the mainstream does too. Wait, does that mean everybody wins? Where the hell do I sign up?

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Posted on October 19, 2010 at 2:23PM

 

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  1. Scott @ WFNY
    10/19 2010

    “Is SB Nation still independent, and will that change if and when Comcast swoops in and buys up the joint? Is Bleacher Report independent? Is Deadspin?”

    No, no, no and no.

  2. Ty
    10/19 2010

    I worry that independent sports blogs are trying to crack into the mainstream by volunteering to be subsumed into the mainstream model . . . the failing of which is a huge reason why the independent blogs are doing so well to begin with. It’s kind of like how MMA’s first step was to ape the pay-per-view/alphabet soup of ruling organizations/”this guy only fights on HBO” model that dismantled boxing.

    I do applaud the increasing ability of sports bloggers to turn their efforts into actual legal tender, but this all seems to be happening awfully fast–and without consulting the hundreds of independent sites whose work is drawing all these monetizable eyeballs to begin with.

    Related, but rhetorical question: why is it that on the same day we laud FOX Sports’ takeover of Yardbarker, we deride the Washington Post for syndicating Bleacher Report content to their main page? What if FOX Sports had bought Bleacher Report, and WaPo syndicated YB content instead, would that have been cool? I don’t know the answers to those questions, just throwing them out there.

    Peace
    Ty

  3. Philip Van der Vossen
    10/19 2010

    Dan, I was thinking the same questions when I heard the news, and I don’t know the answer either. I assume you can still be independent if you are affiliated with other media outlets, but not owned by one. So if your content is syndicated or someone represents your ad inventory, you can still maintain your independence. Individual SBNation blogs aren’t independent, but I guess SBNation itself is, as long as it has no parent organization right?

  4. Philip Van der Vossen
    10/19 2010

    I just decided to look it up, rather than speculate. Wikipedia is always right :
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Media

    Independent media refers to any form of media, such as radio, television, newspapers or the Internet, that is free of influence by government or corporate interests. The term has varied applications. Within the United States and other developed countries, it is often used synonymously with alternative media to refer to media that specifically distinguish themselves in relation to the mainstream media. In international development, the term independent media is used in relation to the development of new media outlets, particularly in areas where there is little to no existing media presence.

  5. gally
    10/19 2010

    Ty, we deride the Washington Post for syndicating Bleacher Report, because BR is a running joke amongst the blogoshpere. They’re notorious for plagiarizing content, partially because they are so big and have so many writers. With the Yardbarker Network, each of us sites that belong to it have editorial control, so while YBN has ~800 blogs, it has ~800 editors to ensure, hopefully, quality.

    The other problem with BR is its content. They did a post slideshow on which 15 women they would like to have seen receiving sexts sexual harassment from Brett Favre. This is the kind of stuff that is being partnered with the Washington Post’s high standards of journalistic integrity? This is why the WaPo get’s derided and Fox Sports gets lauded.

  6. Ty
    10/19 2010

    Oh, I’m well aware of B/R’s reputation. My point was, if the Mainstreamest of the MSM is so desperate to get some of that newfangled online stuff before it’s too late, that they’ll syndicate B/R content . . . maybe successful, independent blogs (and blog networks) should stay successful and independent–rather than jumping aboard a sinking ship.

    Peace
    Ty