Ben Koo@bkoo
Today, @awfulannouncing was announced as a new content partner of Yahoo Sports. This is a major milestone for the team at AA, and we cannot thank @ryanspoon and the @YahooSports team enough.
This means a lot to me personally, given my long-standing relationship with Yahoo and Yahoo Sports.
Yahoo was my first email address (still in use!). It was my first fantasy sports league as well.
The history of Yahoo Sports is, in my opinion, often overlooked. We think of them as a major entity now, but that’s not always been the case. Yahoo Sports, in particular, has always been an innovator and an underdog, punching above its weight among larger media companies that are reinforced with major sports television rights and studio programming. Some of the highlights…
- Before fantasy sports became a mainstream phenomenon, Yahoo proactively acquired a few fledgling online fantasy sports startups, whose technology catapulted them to some of the largest market shares in the industry.
-Yahoo also made what was, at the time, one of the largest acquisitions in digital sports media when it acquired Rivals. Doing so saw them leap ahead of ESPN in the Comscore digital audience rankings, a point of pride for Yahoo and one of frustration for ESPN, and one that took nearly a decade for ESPN to flip back.
-As more eyeballs shifted to mobile, Yahoo made the shrewd acquisition of Citizen Sports, giving it a larger foothold in mobile, as Citizen Sports' technology became the popular Yahoo Sports app (which is still my preferred scores app today).
-In terms of people, the sports group had a knack for bringing in up-and-coming digital media executives, many of whom have gone on to more prominent roles within the company or elsewhere. Included in that group are Brian Grey, who would go on to become Bleacher Report’s CEO; Jamie Mottram, who would later launch For The Win; Jimmy Pitaro, now the President of ESPN, Shannon Terry, who went on to start 24/7 Sports and On3, Mike Kerns, who was the first major investor in Barstool Sports; as well as highly regarded executives like Dave Morgan, Eric Winter, Mark Pesavento, and others who are probably shaking their heads I didn’t include them!
- But what really connected with people was the content. Yahoo had a really well-executed two-prong strategy of fun, smart, and conversational blog content that sat alongside outstanding original reporting and commentary.
The Y! Sports Blogs is, to this day, the best corporate integration of sports blogging. The sport-specific blogs had an incredible roster, consistent content, and signaled the cultural apex of sports blogging. The real sports blog OGs can probably still name five of these defunct properties (feel free to comment if you can!)
But old-school journalism and commentary were also key tenets, with the likes of Dan Wetzel, Charles Robinson, and Jeff Passan doing original reporting and commentary. Meanwhile, Adrian Wojnarowski and Shams Charania popularized the concept of newsbreaking and played a pivotal role in increasing interest in the NBA beyond just the games. In terms of investigative written journalism, Yahoo Sports was right there with Sports Illustrated and ESPN, an incredible feat for a company that didn’t have any sports reporters not that long before. The Reggie Bush and Miami booster scandal still rings out as some of the better scoops of that era.
- It was Yahoo who made sports media history when they became the first company to exclusively stream a NFL game back in 2015.
Some of these milestones can be forgotten, especially given that the company went through a period of turmoil, mainly due to having four different CEOs in under one year, many of whom differed on whether Yahoo was a technology or media company. Verizon’s ownership helped in some areas, but some of the bold moves and risk-taking that the company was known for seemed to fall by the wayside.
With new and stable ownership (Apollo Global Management) and leadership (Jim Lanzone) since 2021, the company, and Yahoo Sports in particular, has had a renaissance, reclaiming its former glory and, more importantly, its pesky underdog risk-taking roots.
Ryan Spoon, who joined in 2022, spearheaded several initiatives, including a vertical-specific partnership approach with Ariel Halwani, The Athletic, and On3, a streaming partnership with F1, and the launch of popular new video and newsletter products like Yahoo Sports AM and Yahoo Sports Daily. It’s not hard to see that Yahoo has a growing appetite for making big bets in the digital sports category, something other large companies have been leaning away from due to rising TV rights fees and cord-cutting, squeezing budgets across many competitors. Yesterday, Jarrod Schwarz was named the new head of Yahoo Sports. I’m sure he’ll continue the great work Ryan and the rest of the team have done and I look forward to working with him.
I’ve been working in this industry for nearly 20 years. Partnering with Yahoo has always been a goal. I couldn’t be more excited about this opportunity for Awful Announcing, given the company’s rich history and bright future.
sports.yahoo.com/sports-busines…
