NBCSports.com To Host, Sell, Promote ProFootballTalk.com

Popular Web Site ProFootballTalk.com Sells Exclusive Content Rights To NBC Sports

NBCSports.com has agreed to host, sell and promote Mike Florio's ProFootballTalk.com under the new brand "ProFootballTalk on NBCSports.com." NBC Sports will use the site for its coverage of  "Sunday Night Football," "Football Night in America," Notre Dame football and the "ADT NBC Sports" updates. Florio launched his blog in '01 and generally posts between 30-50 items per day on the NFL from his office and home in West Virginia (John Ourand, THE DAILY). In L.A., Sam Farmer reports Florio will still own ProFootballTalk.com, but "has sold exclusive rights to its content to NBC." Farmer writes the combination "of an NFL broadcast partner and PFT is an interesting one, because Florio's site has anything but a starched, corporate feel." NBC Sports & Olympics Chair Dick Ebersol: "The sites that are most successful are the ones that have the most unique voices, and I think Mike definitely has one of the most unique voices. I can't think of another pro football website that has the unique following in such large numbers that Mike does. I'd be a fool if I tried to change that." NBC's Al Michaels added, "Over the past couple of years, he's been as wired into the NFL as anybody. It's not that he gets every single thing right, but he's clearly got a really good pipeline for information" (L.A. TIMES, 6/15). On Long Island, Neil Best wrote the move is "another fascinating milestone in sports blogging history" (NEWSDAY.com, 6/14).

DETAILS OF THE DEAL: Florio writes after his initial meeting with NBC Sports Digital GM Rick Cordella, they "agreed that any arrangement between PFT and NBC would reserve to me the power to decide what to write, when to write it, and how to write it -- with not a single layer of NBC editorial input." He added Ebersol "wants it that way, too." Florio also noted in an "effort to make the site even better, I’ll be giving up the practice of law" (PROFOOTBALLTALK.com, 6/15). SI.com's Peter King notes with Florio giving up law, NBC "could be getting even more valuable content than PFT has been publishing." The move is effective July 1, and the "next interesting football-related journalistic battle line might be how many clicks NBCSports.com can take away from the field." PFT's "best month had 1.7 unique visitors to the site; that's going to skyrocket now" (SI.com, 6/15).