Fox Sports Interactive Media Acquires Blog Network Yardbarker

Yardbarker's Blog Network Best Known For Hosting Athlete's Blogs, Like McNabb

Fox Sports Interactive Media (FSIM) has acquired blog network Yardbarker, expanding upon a prior content and sales partnership and solidifying FoxSports.com's presence in the blogosphere. The two entities first struck a content syndication deal in '08, significantly enlarging that relationship a year ago to include a sales component and deeper editorial collaboration. But FSIM Exec VP & GM Jeff Husvar said the purchase of the site was driven by a desire to bring Yardbarker's content, younger audience, technology and management team more fully into FSIM. "This is an important move for us," Husvar said. "This has been a great partnership that we can now further optimize." Financial terms were not disclosed. Yardbarker will remain based in S.F., and its team of roughly a dozen employees will stay intact. Yardbarker now features more than 850 blogs in its network from a wide variety of sources, but is perhaps best known for its blogs from star athletes such as Redskins QB Donovan McNabb. "We look forward to working even more closely with Fox and continuing to grow with them," said Pete Vlastelica, Yardbarker co-Founder & CEO. FoxSports.com, which has included Yardbarker traffic in its monthly numbers for the past year, ranked third behind Yahoo Sports and ESPN among sports sites in September according to comScore with 28.9 million unique users.