New York — AOL is moving intensely into the fast-growing world of mixed martial arts, buying MMAFighting.com, an eight-year-old independent enthusiast Web site devoted to the sport of mixed martial arts, its third acquisition in a month to lure online advertisers.
Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but AOL executives said the new site MMAFighting.com, which was launched in 2001, will cover all the stories and multimedia from the already extensive Mixed Martial Arts now on AOL’s sports site, FanHouse, within the next few months, New York-based AOL said in a statement today.
And after a planned relaunch of MMAFighting.com later this year, both properties’ staffs and resources will become the home for the current MMA FanHouse, AOL’s flagship sports destination. The newly unified destination will provide MMA fans with in-depth information on the sport, which to-date has been unavailable in the mainstream sports media.
MMAFighting.com, now becomes part of the group of specialized content properties operated by AOL’s content publishing division. FanHouse is among the leading sports destinations on the Web, with more than 8.4 million monthly unique visitors, according to June 2009 comScore Media Metrix data, making it one of the top sports destinations online.
“MMA’s popularity has exploded over the past several years and we have built our MMA destination on FanHouse to be one of the premier sites for MMA coverage,” said Marty Moe, Senior Vice President, AOL Money & Finance, News, Sports, and Weblogs. “We expect MMA to continue its growth with both fans and advertisers, and with the addition of MMAFighting.com and its outstanding team, our goal is to be the leading destination for high-quality MMA news, analysis, information and community.”
AOL, in June acquired local community news and event-publicity Web sites Going Inc. and Patch Media Corp. for less than $20 million to capitalize on local Internet advertising. AOL Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong has added niche publishing content as the Internet company prepares to separate from Time Warner by the end of the year.
AOL’s growing attention to the much violent sport, which combines elements of boxing, wrestling and martial arts — comes just as general interests is increasing for MMA in the mainstream sports world. For example, Yahoo Sports in the past year has identified MMA as a potential source of traffic growth, and just in the past week ESPN.com devoted a heavy dosage of its prime home page real estate to the UFC 100 — a major MMA event.
Mixed martial arts and the Ultimate Fighting Championship have now been transformed from being banned in some U.S. states to being pay- per-view events. Mixed-martial-arts fighting is a combat sport between two fighters who employ techniques from the various martial arts disciplines in a free-form fighting contest.
But AOL’s Moe senses an opening for AOL to carve leadership in a still-fragmented and emerging space. “We definitely view MMA as warranting much more than a channel on FanHouse,” he said. “By merging these sites, we think we can have a commanding position. This is an under-covered space. We see a giant opportunity.”
FanHouse features more than 30 top sports writers from around the country, including notables such as Jay Mariotti, Kevin Blackistone, Nancy Gay, Lisa Olson, Greg Couch, Terence Moore and David Whitley.
AOL, currently headquartered in New York but with a significant presence at its Dulles offices, is gearing up for life on its own. Parent company Time Warner has announced plans to spin AOL off as a separate, publicly traded company this year, 8 years after what became a rocky merger.