Former AOL executive vice president of consumer and publisher services Jim Bankoff has secured a “mid-seven-figure sum” of venture capital for SB Nation, a startup network of sports blogs. We already mentioned this briefly in an earlier post on competitor Bleacher Report raising $3.5 million, but it’s worth taking a closer look.
The round of funding was led by Accel Partners, the Silicon Valley private equity firm best known for its backing of Facebook, and joined by Allen & Co as well as a number of digital media executives and angel investors. SportsBusinessJournal got the scoop and features the complete list of investors.
SB Nation (short for SportsBlogs Nation) operates with a network model, in which more than 150 local, team-based sites are linked together with a common visual template but remain written and programmed by local writers. Rather than strike affiliate relationships or simply represent sites for national ad sales, Bankoff has structured equity swaps for each of the sites in SB Nation in which the company acquires all the content, URLs and related assets, and the bloggers then share the ad revenue.
The SB Nation sites are said to be generating more than 2 million unique visitors a month combined, according to internal metrics. Looking at the Quantcast and Compete stats, the actual figures seem to be lower but definitely growing. Update: as correctly pointed out by SB Nation employees in comments, those numbers only reflect the main domain name, not the aggregate of all network sites.
Bankoff will serve as chairman for the company. Tyler Bleszinski, whose five-year-old Athletics Nation blog in Oakland was a building block for SB Nation, will remain president of the company. He has this to say about the news:
Yes, the humble company that I started back in November of 2003 (AN will be five years old in just nine days) has blossomed into a thriving new media company with funding. I’m very thankful and lucky to be associated with the quality of people and blogs that we have here.
We’re still trying to find out the actual amount of funding that was raised.
Congratulations to BankOff as a Chairman.
Thanks
Good site but http://www.lecycling.com now in open beta is adding content and for cyclists offers extended services as a cycling community.
Funding is being provided and full launch is due January 2009 – more to come
I guess he’s off to the bank. No pun intended.
Totally love the concept, been tracking them from a while. They seem to be getting a lot of user contributions and following. Most of their blog post (I’ve only been following some basketball related ones), generates user comments and participation.
The content is actually quite good as well. Another similar type of sports blogs network that I have been following being a huge nba fan is http://mvn.com/. I think they are going through a changing of sorts as it looks different then when I have last seen it. (I think it allows user submitted articles as well now.)
I think the concept was originally called Rivals.com. Heh.
If Rivals.com was over funded at $90 million circa 1999, then a blog network like SB Nation is WAAAAAAY over funded at mid-seven-figure sum” in 2008.
Just sayin.
wow…a complete rip-off from the SportsBusinessJournal article. Nice TC.
Check out http://www.allt...ngsfootball.com. They are building a blog/forum site together that will be dedicated to just Pro/College football. We’ll see how it goes
You might want to change your site name to allthingsempty forum.
>>>>>> OBAMA IS LOSING!!!!!!!
Thanks for the update man. Let’s keep it tech. You are putting this message everywhere.
Anyways. Its a similar model to what I reccomended the Blogger and Podcaster Media Network do last night. The only problem is, unless they have every sports team covered, they aren’t a very valuable place to go to (theyre dreaming if they think they can) Also, why isn’t the homepage delivering more fresh content that looks like a newspress as opposed to just looking like an aggregator? Also, this project may take more manual work than they once thought. I could see a ‘blogger for hire’ sign coming out of their offices very soon.
Blog networks seem to be all the rage these days. Thecollegeblognetwork.com links college bloggers from around the world, and thereby gets a lot of college-sports related content via osmosis.
The traffic stats you list are just for SBNation.com — the aggregator site. The network has over 160 sites. You’d have to quantcast them all individually to get an aggregate total for the network. But the traffic stats sited are accurate.
Just a quick note regarding the Quantcast and Compete numbers you cited – those are only represent our portal, sbnation.com. Our blogs don’t reside under that domain, they all have their own unique domain name. For example: http://www.athl...ticsnation.com/
post updated, thx for chipping in
Congrats to SB Nation! We reference a lot of SB Nation blogs on fanbunker.com, an aggregation site that compiles the best online content from bloggers to beat writers to online forums.
A mid 7 figure some seems way too much to me as well. I just hope Tyler can stay in control over there. When grassroots sites like these start to take outside investment from multiple sources and the returns aren’t there sometimes the original founders get forced out.
SB Nation model, IMO, is weaker than FanDome’s which if you look at quantcast is on quite a tear recently. FanDome owns their sites and is much more a social technology company. I’d be much more likely to bet on their success. SBNation is costly to operate and doesn’t come close in terms of community.
>>>>>> OBAMA IS LOSING!!!!!!!
HE IS TOAST!!! [we can't tell the difference]
Please stop spamming our boards. We’re here to talk about Tech issues, not politics.
Patrick,
You have no idea what you are talking about. SB Nation owns all their websites and they pay a rev share to great writers. SB Nation’s community is actually pretty amazing if you look at the amount of comments each of their blogs get. Sports fans can care less about technology. They want great content. If they want highlights they can go to the major sites for that. And based on the highlights FanDome is showing it is much more costly to run their website unless they aren’t paying for the rights to show those highlights. If they aren’t paying for those rights, then as soon as they get big they will be shut down.
Just checked http://www.lecycling.com, overall it does not have the user community that SB Nation’s http://www.podiumcafe.com has.
sportstechnow- Good to know about SB Nation. Point is FanDome’s team sites seem to be more scalable and driven by user input. My guess is SB Nation acquired its blogs over years, on the other hand it looks like (based on Quantcast) that FanDome has come on the scene pretty fast out of nowhere and is more of a team social network. But I agree, I like both sites.
Patrick,
I agree that scalability can be a bit of a problem managing each of the different domains. Fandome has come on to the scene fast but the big question is would Fandome have come on this fast if they didn’t have the video highlights that they are probably not paying for? I highly doubt it.
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We are looking for a capital partner as well. Check out our site – http://www.ColesSports.com
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