News Blog

Time Warner's AOL has acquired Fleaflicker, a free fantasy football site.

Site founder and operator Ori Schwartz confirmed the acquisition Saturday but declined to describe terms of the deal. AOL's move was reported Friday by TechCrunch.

MediaPost Publications reported that AOL will add the site to its AOL Sports area.

Fantasy sports sites let members create imaginary team rosters out of real players; how those players perform in real-world games influences how fantasy teams fare.

Sports fans boosted ESPN's status in ComScore's latest measurements of Web site traffic, but the top sites kept their rankings unchanged during March.

ESPN jumped from 46th place with 17.8 million page views from U.S. visitors in February to 34th place with 22.4 million page views in March, the month of the March Madness college basketball tournament and the Major League Baseball season opening, ComScore said.

Sports-related online gambling sites also saw a surge, with Sportingbet's visitor tally jumping 35 percent to 975,000, ComScore said. Upickem.net and SportsBetting.com, while smaller, also saw major gains.

The biggest players, however, were unruffled by these blips, with the top 10 unchanged in their relative rankings.

Yahoo kept the top spot with 140 million page views. Next were Google, with 138 million page views; Microsoft, with 121 million; AOL, with 111 million; and Fox Interactive, with 88 million.

ComScore makes its estimates of Web site visitors and page views based on the surfing behavior of about 2 million people at home, work, and college, with statistical extrapolations to gauge total traffic.

The methodology, though, hasn't sat well with Web site operators such as MySpace who say traffic is much higher and with the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which last year asked ComScore and its rival, Nielsen/NetRatings, to submit their data to audits. (CNET Networks, which is News.com's parent company, is among the IAB board members that approved the audit request.)

For those of you who have tuned out the golf world, the most prestigious tournament in golf, The Masters, is this weekend.

To mark its 72nd year, Augusta is turning up the heat on its online presence. With partner IBM, Augusta National is offering a rich online experience for golf lovers. While the online coverage still does not rival what is offered currently on broadcast TV, it's great for the times in which national TV is not covering the event, or for sneaking a peek at work.

Masters.org's online coverage

This is not the first year for online coverage of The Masters. They debuted the service back in 2006, but it's been improved upon and tweaked to the state that we see it in today. Unfortunately, the available video streams are limited to Amen Corner (holes 11, 12, and 13) and an additional stream of holes 15 and 16.

Over time, I think that it is safe to assume that we will see complete coverage of the tournament online, since it has been steadily adding streams since the service debuted. Rounding out the online offering is a nice slide-out, customizable leaderboard, with live stats.

I really have to applaud The Masters on this Web offering. This sort of online content is very unexpected from an organization like Augusta National, which is notorious for the control that it demands over live TV broadcasts of the tournament.

Online coverage of sports is a very exciting field, with a lot of potential. I think that this will become really clear when we see the Silverlight-powered online coverage of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing this summer. With a wealth of options for viewing video, side by side with statistics and a variety of other information, services such as this one from The Masters, the 2008 Olympics, and MLB.tv are taking the experience of watching sports online to the next level.

Yahoo announced Thursday that it has teamed up with MLB.com, the digital arm of professional baseball's operations, in a partnership that encompasses both video distribution and ad sales.

Considering the turmoil over at Yahoo, the three-year agreement could be either a home run or a strikeout.

On the video side, content from Major League Baseball's MLB.tv will be syndicated on Yahoo Sports through the 2010 season. This means that if you're a Yahoo user, you'll be able to watch live and on-demand baseball games on Yahoo Sports--provided that they're not in your home market. MLB.com says this will amount to more than 2,400 games each year. Yahoo Sports will additionally broadcast game recap show FastCast and other MLB.com video.

The MLB.tv content will be available on a co-branded player on Yahoo Sports in 11 countries, including the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Currently, access to live out-of-market games on MLB.com's MLB.tv requires a subscription of between $14.95 and $19.95 per month (or $89.95 and $119.95 per year), depending on quality. Yahoo users will pay the same subscription amount for the co-branded Yahoo Sports player.

Yahoo will also be the exclusive advertising partner for MLB.tv in the 2009 and 2010 seasons. In the 2008 season, Yahoo will use its Clickable video ads as well as preroll and postroll ads provided by MLB Advanced Media. After that, Yahoo will take over completely by using its new AMP graphical ad system.

That whole Microsoft thing, or Google thing, or News Corp. thing, or whatever it is now, could shake things up, though.

Yardbarker, a social network for athletes and their fans, has joined the pack of new venture-funded sports sites.

The Emeryville, Calif.-based Yardbarker (old slang for a home run) said this week that it raised $5 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and a group of its early angel investors. In the spring of 2007, the company brought in an undisclosed sum from angels including Russ Siegelman, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Jarl Mohn, former CEO of Liberty Digital and a director at News.com publisher CNET Networks; and Ronnie Lott, former 49ers Hall of Famer.

The market for emerging sports media sites is filling up quickly, in what's surely a warning shot to existing players ESPN and Yahoo Sports. Weplay, for example, recently launched a social network for youth sports and said it raised $4.5 million from hedge fund Pequot Capital and sports figures like Derek Jeter. Virtual-world maker Numedeon also unveiled a new virtual world for sports fans called SportsBlox and has raised capital to finance that venture.

Pete Vlastelica, CEO and co-founder of Yardbarker, said his site is different because it's a destination site for fans and athletes that features blogs from sports stars, as well as a network of 300 affiliated blogs. The company syndicates content to and from its network of blogs, and sells advertising against that network. Vlastelica said he plans to use the new funds to hire engineering and sales staff.

"We have a real opportunity to differentiate (ourselves) through our technology so we're not just an ad network," Vlastelica said. "This is a new type of media company with a hub that directs traffic around the network, so we can run custom ads."

Numedeon, the 9-year-old company behind kids' virtual world Whyville.net, is taking a leap into producing simulated environments for adults, starting with a sports theme. Called SportsBlox, the site launched in beta this week as part of March Madness.

Created by scientists from Cal Tech, Numedeon is also growing up in another way. For the first time in its history, it has taken money from an institutional investor in a series B round of financing.

In a sign that investors are particularly excited about virtual worlds, the company plans to raise between $1 million and $2 million, according to Numedeon's Chief Operating Officer Jay Goss. (Numedeon plans to formally announce its funding partner April 2.) In its nine years, it has raised roughly $3 million from private investors, including the game show host Pat Sajak.

(Credit: Numedeon)

Like Whyville, SportsBlox lets people customize a virtual persona, chat with friends, and use digital currency to buy gear inside the world. Unlike Whyville, which is designed for kids age 8 to 15, SportsBlox caters to the jock set and other sports junkies, primarily men between the ages of 18 to 35. Instead of beaches and educational outposts, the site will largely feature virtual watering holes.

Goss said he hopes SportsBlox will help niche sports enthusiasts, from Nascar lovers to kite surfers, find each other inside the "corner" bar. For example, the site has Gahden (a play on the Boston Garden), a virtual hangout for Boston sports fans; Break Lights for L.A. sports fans (because of all the traffic in Los Angeles); and Curve Ball, a virtual hot spot for baseball fans. In all, the site has 20 sports bars and a "tailgate" area. As a means to make money, Goss said he hopes to bring on branded environments from marketers, too, if and when the site grows popular.

"This is indicative of where the company is now headed," Goss said. "We've spent nine years understanding the experience of virtual worlds and we've decided to become a media company that has multiple virtual worlds."

The company plans to run at least five virtual worlds by the end of the year, including launching its own enthusiast site in an area such as music, politics, or entertainment. This summer, it expects to unveil an international version of Whyville for kids in the European market, and it will introduce another world for older Americans.

Goss added that with the funds, Numedeon plans to buy its first virtual-world company this year. He did not say to whom the company is talking.

TiVo might be overstating the fabulosity of the advertisements aired during Sunday's Super Bowl broadcast.

See the headline TiVo used to lead its press release regarding the most-watched ads during the game: "Talking and Trading Baby Blows Away Star-Studded Super Bowl Competition."

Um...really? Were we watching the same game?

Even if you're not a sports person, that game was "one for the ages," as sportswriters like to say. Even in the midst of a five-hour broadcast inflated with as many empty pleas for your dollars and attention as Fox could possibly fit, the star was the game itself, a succinct demonstration of why it is that we love sports.

From a sports perspective, it was the classic set-up, the epic storyline fans, broadcasters, and writers love: An established football dynasty, the New England Patriots, on the verge of achieving the rarest of feats (an undefeated season) prepared to steamroll the fifth-seeded New York Giants en route to a much-deserved place in the annals of sports.

Instead, we viewers got a gem of a game, the kind that leaves lifelong fans seriously wondering if they've even witnessed a better Super Bowl, or football game, in their memory.

But, TiVo would rather crow about which multimillion-dollar ad spot (which you're likely to forget by next week, anyway) was watched the most. The talking E-Trade babies "upstaged" every other commercial, according to TiVo audience stats, including the Doritos user-generated mouse trap, the Life Water "Thriller" spot, as well as the one where Justin Timberlake is dragged all over creation for the sake of Pepsi.

But was a CGI baby talking stocks really more memorable than young quarterback Eli Manning somehow escaping a near-certain game-ending sack to curl out and heave a pass 30-plus yards to a falling David Tyree--who didn't as much "catch" the ball as clutch it with one hand to his helmet?

Maybe I'm belaboring the point, but TiVo's urge to jump on the coattails of an amazing exercise in athletic competition seems to cheapen a classic matchup, and, more importantly, an unforgettable end to a story.

The Golf Channel plans to offer high-tech data to its viewers in the form of 3D representations beginning in January.

A Doppler radar system made by the Denmark-based software developer Interactive Sports Games will begin to be used to convey club movement, ball trajectory, and other statistics to viewers, according to the company. The Golf Channel's first use of the TrackMan system will be at the Mercedes-Benz Championship in Hawaii on January 3, according to reports. TrackMan can also measure things like ball-landing coordinates and spin rates, according to ISG.

The Golf Channel, which is the exclusive cable channel for the PGA tour, the LPGA tour, the USGA, and PGA of America, plans to use the system to show its viewers visual analyses of a golfer's tendencies, ball flight, and side-by-side looks at how different players approach the same hole. It will include multiple views of swings and ball movement.

The channel said it will be the first American broadcaster to use such technology for PGA events.

(Credit: Wikimedia)

After attempts to "crowdsource" the purchase of a soccer club, it was obviously just a matter of time until the concept of crowdsourcing--the act of outsourcing a job or task to a group of people--would be applied to the actual game.

The Israeli team Hapoel Play65 Kiryat Shalom, a shared project of the online backgammon room Play65 and the Israeli social network for sports fans Web2sport, prides itself on being the first Web 2.0 soccer club in the world.

The club has begun experimenting with a wisdom-of-the-fans approach that allows the team's supporters to monitor the game online and suggest starting lineup, tactics, and substitutions--in other words be the manager and coach. On the club's Web site, fans can drag virtual players into their preferred positions on a pitch diagram. The information is then collated and the players who get the most votes line up for the next match.

Ahead of the season's opening match, some 6,000 people took advantage of this opportunity. However, it remains disputable whether the wisdom of the crowd can match the solitary genius of star coaches like Arsene Wenger (Arsenal London) or Frank Rijkaard (FC Barcelona): in its first crowdsourced game, Hapoel Play65 Kiryat Shalom lost 3-2 to Maccabi Ironi Or Yehuda in injury time.