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| Four High School Friends May Be Celebrating Their Startup's ~ $200 Million Acquisition Today |
Bleacher Report, one of the largest sports sites on the web, has been acquired by Turner Media, AllThingsD's Peter Kafka reports.
The two have been in talks for a few months now. In April we reported that Turner looked at Bleacher Report and walked away.
In June, AllThingsD reported a $200 million acquisition between the two was likely.
AllThingsD says the deal was finished on Friday and will be announced today. A Sports Business Journal reporter, Eric Fisher, tweeted that the deal was closer to $175 million. Bloomberg reports the acquisition price is also under $200 million.
Bleacher Report was founded by four high school friends and life-long sports fans in 2006, Bryan Goldberg, Dave Finocchio, Zander Freund and Dave Nemetz. Three are still at the company in VP roles; Freund left in 2009.
But Brian Grey, Bleacher Report's CEO, is really behind this acquisition. He joined Bleacher Report from Fox Sports Interactive and was formerly GM of Yahoo! Sports. Drew Atherton is Bleacher Report's CFO and Rich Calacci is its CRO.
According to ComScore, Bleacher Report has about 9 million monthly uniques. Other sources have reported between 22 and 25 million visitors per month and 550 million pageviews.
While the traffic sounds a little low for a $200 million sale, its revenues are impressive.
A source told us Bleacher Report was on track to generate $30-40 million this year.
In addition, Turner may be looking to fill the sports void from SI.com*, Kafka points out. It recently gave up control of the property to Time Inc.
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