Sunnyvale, California — Yahoo Inc., on Wednesday beefed up its efforts to lure more sports fans with the announcement that it has agreed to buy Citizen Sports, a U.S. startup company that develops sports-related applications for social networking sites such as Facebook and Apple’s iPhone devices.
Citizen Sports is joining Yahoo, likely in part to help improve the social-networking efforts of Yahoo’s content. (Screenshot by: news.eBrandz.com)
Yahoo, for several months indicated that it would be buying more companies and it has finally announced the acquisition of sports startup Citizen Sports, in a statement but did not disclose financial terms. Technology blog All Things Digital estimated the value of CitizenSports.com at between 40 million US dollars and 50 million US dollars.
According to Yahoo!, Citizen Sports boasts millions of users for its social network and mobile sports offerings, which it says will compliment Yahoo Sports, the top sports site in the U.S.
Indeed, the acquisition is expected to reward Yahoo’s social strategy of enriching, aggregating and distributing sports content from across the web, the space it has been feeble, in addition to the Internet company’s ongoing efforts to integrate social networking features into its core businesses, especially since Citizen’s Sports has proven itself in the social sports industry with its innovative applications.
Citizen Sports possesses an array of popular sports apps on the iPhone and on social networking sites, in fact, millions of people are said to using Citizen Sports various social and mobile products including fantasy sports, live scores and up-to-the minutes sports news. These will blend well with Yahoo Sports content to create a seamless experience for all of us sports fans.
Citizen Sports products empowers users to play fantasy sports, view live scores and read news on such sports as American football, hockey, soccer, baseball, racing, rugby and cricket.
By contrast, Yahoo Sports has long been the top player in the online fantasy sports market and touts more than 39 million monthly unique users in the U.S. While Citizen’s Sports favorite programs that functions with Facebook, MySpace, hi5, iPhone and Android span across professional, college and high school sports. These two sports services are definitely a match-made-in heaven.
In its announcement, Yahoo says the contents form Yahoo Sports will be integrated into Citizen Sports’ apps. Jointly, the company says, Yahoo Sports and Citizen Sports will create a “more personally relevant experience, drive deeper user engagement and create opportunities for advertisers to interact with audiences in new environments.”
“Citizen Sports was founded with the intent to enable fans to access news, scores and fantasy games on the platform of their choice,” Mike Kerns, founder and chief executive of Citizen Sports, said in a statement.
“We look forward to becoming a part of Yahoo! and bringing our social experiences to their 600 million users around the globe,” Kerns said.
The San Francisco, Calif.-based Citizen Sports was formed by a couple of entrepreneurs, including Jeff Ma, the notorious MIT student who successfully counted cards and won millions from Las Vegas casinos in the 1990s.
“Sports has been among the most primitive online categories to experience rapid social growth, and the combination of Citizen Sports leading products with our world-class sports experience on Yahoo! Sports is a win-win for sports fans globally,” Bryan Lamkin, a Yahoo senior vice president, said in a statement.
Without disclosing financial terms, Yahoo said the deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2010.