Start-up sports sites attract media attention

Online coverage of niche sporting events got a boost today, with Internet sports news service Rivals.com linking up with FoxSports.com.

Separately, on Monday, two Silicon Valley businesswomen will introduce their new start-up, called Pupule Sports, a site for women athletes slated to appear sometime next year.

Both sites are betting that the Internet will attract die-hard sports audiences ignored by traditional broadcast media--a group that appears to be drawing greater interest from bigger media companies.

Although the long-term market for such niche programming is uncertain, Rivals saw its ratings climb last month to rank at No. 16 among online sports sites in terms of unique users, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

The content-sharing agreement between Rivals and FoxSports appears to be a good fit. While Rivals focuses more on college and high school football and basketball--the Georgia High School site is one of its most popular--FoxSports provides news on all professional sports and teams. It also has a large collection of game videos.

Some of the video links will be set up later today, with the remainder due for release over the weekend.

"We believe that Fox is in the best position of any other media to secure digital rights for sports content," said John Uppendahl, vice president of marketing at Rivals. "It's not so much what they have today, but what they will get in the future."

The move is part of an investment package that was sealed in August, when Rivals was launched. News Corp.'s News Digital Media, producer of FoxSports, is an investor in Rivals, based in Seattle, Wash.

Pupule Sports was founded by two Silicon Valley women--Chris Shipley, editor and publisher of Demo Letter, and Laura Jarrell, a former sporting-goods specialty retailer--who were frustrated at the wealth of coverage in men's sports but the lack of news for women athletes. Pupule means "crazy" in Hawaiian. The founders chose the word to symbolize the passion female athletes feel toward sports.

Shipley and Jarrell could not immediately be reached for comment.

Pupule, based in Redwood City, Calif., will feature sports news about women and offer sports products.

The company has enlisted some big-name tech personalities to its board of directors, including William Krause, founder of 3Com, and Kathy Levinson, president of online brokerage firm E*Trade. Other advisers include executives from Nike, Women.com, Netscape and Sun Microsystems.