Yahoo! Officially Acquires Rivals.com

Several months back The FanHouse reported that Yahoo! was negotiating to purchase Rivals.com. That effort stalled for unknown reasons, although it was speculated that questionable business practices by a Rivals executive had tripped the deal.

However, several more months have passed and the two sides have reached a suitable agreement. What it all means is anyone's guess, but the acquisition makes a little more sense than the Scout.com/MySpace merger reported recently in this space.

Rivals is already publishing some content on the Yahoo! Sports platform but I haven't seen Yahoo! content circulate in Rivals sites. These are strange days where recruiting sites - once the basement business and realm of the 900 number for updates - sell for millions of dollars to former Silicon Valley search engines gone big business.

I have yet to locate a sale price but will update this as we find out more about this merger.

Update: TechCrunch reports that Yahoo! paid $100 million to complete the sale. A very gracious hat tip to reader Jason of Eleven Warriors.