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Rivals.com is a network of websites that focus mainly on college football and basketball recruiting. The network was started in 1998 and currently employs more than 300 personnel.〔(Rivals.com About Us )〕 ==History== Rivals.com was originally founded in 1998 by Jim Heckman in Seattle, Washington, with a cadre of outside investors.〔David Eckoff, "Seattle PI: Jim Heckman wheels, deals", Retrieved 2012-04-05〕 Heckman was once the son-in-law of Don James, the former head football coach at the University of Washington, where Heckman attended school and was later involved in a recruiting scandal.〔(James' Son-in-Law Asked Cougar Recruit to Renege )〕 Initial deriving revenue solely from advertising, Rivals.com later employed a subscription fee of $10.00 per month to users for access to the latest recruiting news and to participate in various message boards dedicated to schools covered by the network. Rivals was funded by money from venture capital firms including the venture funds of Fox and Intel. Rivals acquired AllianceSports, a regional network that primarily covered college sports in the Southeast of the United States, in January 2000.〔(AllianceSports Reestablishes Subscription Model )〕 At its peak, Rivals.com employed close to 200 people, operated a network of 700 independent websites, filed for an initial public offering worth $100 million led by Goldman Sachs, and sponsored the Hula Bowl in Hawaii.〔(Venture Capital: Rivals.com is dead; long live Rivals.com )〕 However, economic troubles and the collapse of the dot-com "bubble" soon led the Rivals Network, the parent company of Rivals.com, to cease operations in 2001, though it never sought bankruptcy protection.〔 Executives from AllianceSports purchased the Rivals.com assets and subsequently relaunched the website.〔(Ex Rivals Founder Shannon Terry Looking to Challenge Rivals, Scout, and ESPN with College Recruiting Network 2.0, 24/7 Sports )〕 Heckman, who had been fired as chief executive officer, later started a competitor network initially named The Insiders, later renamed Scout.com〔 and sold to Fox Interactive Media in 2005 for a reported $60 million.〔(CrunchBase: James Heckman )〕 Led by former AllianceSports executive Shannon Terry, Rivals.com became profitable. On June 20, 2007, Yahoo! agreed to acquire Rivals.com.〔(Yodel Anecdotal » Blog Archive » Listen up, (college) sports fans )〕 Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but several sources reported Yahoo! paid around $100 million.〔(Yahoo Buys Sports Site Rivals.com )〕 Rivals subscribers automatically have their subscription renewed for a term equal to the original term upon expiration of the then-current term, and continually thereafter, unless the Subscriber terminates the subscription by phone at least 48 hours prior to the renewal date. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rivals.com」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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