Fox Sports and The Sporting News expect stronger ad sales and increased online traffic as a result of their decision last week to jointly brand their Web sites, according to officials with the companies.
The deal, which is expected to be completed in mid- or late August, calls for foxsports.com to handle the layout work for each site and provide most of the available free content on the sites. Its sales staff will sell advertising across both sites. Sportingnews.com will provide editorial content and premium fantasy games.
"It's just a perfect way to combine things," said Rick Allen, CEO of The Sporting News. "[Foxsports.com] has the video assets that come initially from television and enrich their free site that we, without video rights, would have a hard time offering. We have the brand and the writers and editors that they don't."
Allen said Sporting News officials have been seeking a deal of this nature for several months. Talks with Fox Sports officials began in earnest earlier this month.
The companies will share advertising and subscription revenue from a deal in which no cash or stock changes hands, according to foxsports.com general manager Ross Levinsohn. He would not elaborate on how revenue would be shared.
Levinsohn said the ability to package Fox's television properties and TSN's print edition should make each entity's Web site competitive with the major players in the category.
"It's really a strategic partnership to take two big brands online and build one bigger brand, to make it more competitive in the marketplace," Levinsohn said.
Neither foxsports.com nor sportingnews.com approaches the top sports Web sites in traffic, but together they reach an audience that Levinsohn said should attract more advertisers.
Allen said that because foxsports.com will take over the sites' design and content backbone, The Sporting News likely will cut a small portion of its online staff devoted to the more basic, information-oriented elements of sportingnews.com. He added that production and maintenance of fantasy games for the two sites would probably necessitate adding staff.
Sportingnews.com has 60 employees in New York and St. Louis.
Foxsports.com earlier this summer laid off all nine of its full-time writers. Levinsohn said that decision was made strictly for financial reasons, before talk of this deal began, and was not a pre-emptive restructuring effort.
