FCS Rivals Web Page???

[BigDawgPop]

Anybody know what it cost a year for a team to have and maintain a Rivals.com web page? Don't know how much it really helps with recruiting but it would seem to help alot with getting your schools name out there. I know that App St has a very nice page and their reporters are right on top of things. There are only a few FCS sites though so I figure the cost must be pretty high.

[Skjellyfetti]

I'm not entirely sure.

What makes App's Rivals site good is Brian McLawhorn. He writes most of the stories, answers just about any question on the pay message board backed up by facts, etc. He also writes for the Duke site... so, I'm not entirely sure if Rivals approached him about expanding to cover Appalachian as well or if he approached them or what.

So, I think finding a quality person that wants to work his ass off on it would be the first step.

[BigDawgPop]

A agree. Brian does an excellent job and is very good at responding to questions and bird dogging information from the staff over there.

[Eagle22]

I ran my site as the Georgia Southern affiliate on Rivals.com page from 1998-2001, prior to Rivals.com bankruptcy (dot-com bubble burst). After the bankruptcy reorganization, I used a clause in the contract to escape from that setup, and returned my site to independent operation.

Unless they've changed their business model, the way it was set up was you signed a contract to produce a certain volume of daily content, had weekly calls with a regional manager to discuss your site growth and market penetration, and you also agreed to participate in local and/or regional online chat or radio programs.

The whole angle Rivals took was to find a local print, radio or TV guy and leverage their knowledge of a particular team to their advantage. They would further attempt, through the contractual language, to require those running a site to cross-pollinate the content, which to some degree worked. In other words, they would get a radio guy to host a local print guy, and the newspaper guy would print an article in the paper and/or website about the radio show, etc, etc. That is how Rivals.com attracted Yahoo! nearly 10 years ago ... Yahoo! was wanting a partner to provide content on the cheap.

At the time, the revenue model was NO subscription whatsoever, and about a 25% publisher / 75% Rivals split of popup and banner ad revenue. Some of the mega sites, like UGA, FSU and UNC had better deals ... because prior to joining the network they had subscription sites... I know the UGA guy was knocking down big money, to the point that it was his full time gig.

Once the dot com bubble burst, ad inventory skyrocketed and Rivals was sunk. The guys who had founded AllianceSports and had been bought out by Rivals, bought the Rivals name and hardware out of bankruptcy for mere pennies on the dollar. AllianceSports had also demonstrated prior to their acquisition, that a subscription based service was not only feasible, but highly profitable.

The original founders of Rivals rebuilt another empire under the Vulcan Press, starting up Citadel Sports. They renamed it TheInsiders.com, which then became Scout.com and is now affiliated with ESPN.

Both services have subscriptions plans in place, and both depend on some ad revenue to make their money, but I would guess that the split on subscription and ad revenue still favors the network and not the individual publisher.

I decided that the time required for the payout involved, was not worth a contractual obligation to me.

At the time, there were only a few I-AA schools represented ... the most active communities were Troy State, GSU, Hofstra, James Madison and Villanova ... well, I should say the most active publishers .. who upheld their contractual obligation. One person was assigned the rest of the Southern Conference, but he also had one of the North Carolina schools. He spent about 99% of his time on the NC school, and zero time on the conference page or other individual schools he was assigned to. I only wish someone like Brian McLawhorn had been there back ten years ago, it would have been good.

From what I understand, Brian handles another large school and ASU is his secondary assignment. If you are a media guy with a lot of time on your hands AND a lot of contacts, it might be profitable to you to follow that model. The problem is, Rivals usually already has their person in place for the big $$$ schools like UT, USC, Penn St, etc.

To do it justice on a national scale for what is sort of a niche product (FCS), would be extremely difficult without completely dedicating all of your time to it. You would have to write enough to justify someone subscribing for your content, because you won't get fairly compensated (IMO) via a network, as the amount of traffic you see would be light relative to the rest of the network.

Just my $0.02. Sorry for the lengthy post, but I thought I'd share. PM me if you want even more details

[danefan]

I ran my site as the Georgia Southern affiliate on Rivals.com page from 1998-2001, prior to Rivals.com bankruptcy (dot-com bubble burst). After the bankruptcy reorganization, I used a clause in the contract to escape from that setup, and returned my site to independent operation.

Unless they've changed their business model, the way it was set up was you signed a contract to produce a certain volume of daily content, had weekly calls with a regional manager to discuss your site growth and market penetration, and you also agreed to participate in local and/or regional online chat or radio programs.

The whole angle Rivals took was to find a local print, radio or TV guy and leverage their knowledge of a particular team to their advantage. They would further attempt, through the contractual language, to require those running a site to cross-pollinate the content, which to some degree worked. In other words, they would get a radio guy to host a local print guy, and the newspaper guy would print an article in the paper and/or website about the radio show, etc, etc. That is how Rivals.com attracted Yahoo! nearly 10 years ago ... Yahoo! was wanting a partner to provide content on the cheap.

At the time, the revenue model was NO subscription whatsoever, and about a 25% publisher / 75% Rivals split of popup and banner ad revenue. Some of the mega sites, like UGA, FSU and UNC had better deals ... because prior to joining the network they had subscription sites... I know the UGA guy was knocking down big money, to the point that it was his full time gig.

Once the dot com bubble burst, ad inventory skyrocketed and Rivals was sunk. The guys who had founded AllianceSports and had been bought out by Rivals, bought the Rivals name and hardware out of bankruptcy for mere pennies on the dollar. AllianceSports had also demonstrated prior to their acquisition, that a subscription based service was not only feasible, but highly profitable.

The original founders of Rivals rebuilt another empire under the Vulcan Press, starting up Citadel Sports. They renamed it TheInsiders.com, which then became Scout.com and is now affiliated with ESPN.

Both services have subscriptions plans in place, and both depend on some ad revenue to make their money, but I would guess that the split on subscription and ad revenue still favors the network and not the individual publisher.

I decided that the time required for the payout involved, was not worth a contractual obligation to me.

At the time, there were only a few I-AA schools represented ... the most active communities were Troy State, GSU, Hofstra, James Madison and Villanova ... well, I should say the most active publishers .. who upheld their contractual obligation. One person was assigned the rest of the Southern Conference, but he also had one of the North Carolina schools. He spent about 99% of his time on the NC school, and zero time on the conference page or other individual schools he was assigned to. I only wish someone like Brian McLawhorn had been there back ten years ago, it would have been good.

From what I understand, Brian handles another large school and ASU is his secondary assignment. If you are a media guy with a lot of time on your hands AND a lot of contacts, it might be profitable to you to follow that model. The problem is, Rivals usually already has their person in place for the big $$$ schools like UT, USC, Penn St, etc.

To do it justice on a national scale for what is sort of a niche product (FCS), would be extremely difficult without completely dedicating all of your time to it. You would have to write enough to justify someone subscribing for your content, because you won't get fairly compensated (IMO) via a network, as the amount of traffic you see would be light relative to the rest of the network.

Just my $0.02. Sorry for the lengthy post, but I thought I'd share. PM me if you want even more details

Thanks for the insight 22. I've always wondered how that worked.

[BigDawgPop]

Thanks so much for taking the time to post all of that information. I am in no way interested in trying to run something like this, but I would like for my new favorite team to startup some type of website that has up to date info and a place for all of our fans to interact with each other. I was just curious as how the Rivals thing worked. Thanks again for your help.

[Skjellyfetti]

Yeah, thanks for that post. Answered some questions I'd always been curious about but never knew where to find the answeres!