The husband and wife behind BallHype and ShowHype, two Digg clones that focus on baseball and entertainment news, have earned a modest pay day: $3 million from media group Future US. That’s not bad given the two never raised institutional funding since launching the first site (BallHype) in April 2007.

Users of BallHype and ShowHype (which launched in October 2007) vote up their favorite stories, and these stories hit the homepage page as they would on Digg, Reddit, or Mixx. But because these sites must cater to their respective niches, users can also view news from narrow topics, such as particular sports teams and celebrities (for example, you can get the latest dish on Amy Winehouse here).

Frontpages for news on the web generally breaks down into two categories: those created algorithmically, and those created through crowd-sourcing. In the baseball sector, the crowd-sourcing approach appears to be winning – BallHype attracts multitudes more visitors than BallBug, a sister site to Techmeme that surfaces baseball news algorithmically.

The size of this transaction was not formally announced but was made known to us by a source familiar to the deal.

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This evening the newest, Showhype, launches, joining a number of existing sites. More on each below:

Lipstick: A Conde Naste site powered by Reddit, which Conde Naste acquired in late 2006.

Dotspotter: Launched June 2006, and just acquired by CBS for $10 million.

SugarLoving: Described by Sugar Inc. CEO as “Digg for Chicks.” It launched last month and already has massive page views, thanks to the affiliated blogs that link into it. It covers everything from tech to fashion, from a woman’s point of view.

ShowHype: The newest of the bunch – it launches this evening. This is from the same Silicon Valley- based startup that launched BallHype in April. Users can see top news on the home page or drill down to keep track of specific movies, television shows or celebrities, all based on tagging.

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The site has a lot of Digg-like features. Users can add sports stories and other users vote those stories up or down, and add comments. Unlike Digg, though, categorization is very important. Sports fans generally care about local teams, or focus on one league. So BallHype allows L.A. Lakers fans to zero right in on relevant content. Or they can focus on L.A. sports in general instead.

BallHype also allows users to add friends and create groups (and other basic social networking features), so local fans can be in touch with each other.

Actual games are also displayed, and users can leave comments on those pages. Users can also vote for who they think will win, and gain points for correct guesses. If the winner is an underdog, more points are awarded.

The BallHype home page is customizable by the user to include local sports, game stats, etc.

BallHype has a long list of advisors to the company, including Matt Watson of USA Today and Gabe Rivera at TechMeme. A demo video of the service is here.

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