Yahoo! buys Citizen Sports
Yahoo! made a play for more sports fans on Wednesday with the purchase of Citizen Sports, a startup that makes sports-related applications for Facebook and Apple's iPhone.
Yahoo! announced the acquisition in a statement but did not disclose financial terms. Technology blog All Things Digital estimated the value of CitizenSports.com at between 40 million dollars and 50 million dollars.
According to Yahoo!, Citizen Sports has millions of users for its social network and mobile sports products.
Citizen Sports products allow users to play fantasy sports, check live scores and read news on such sports as American football, hockey, soccer, baseball, racing, rugby and cricket.
Yahoo! Sports is already the top sports news destination on the Web and the Sunnyvale, California, company said Yahoo! Sports content will be integrated into Citizen Sports products.
"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.
Besides making applications for Facebook and the iPhone, Citizen Sports has also developed products for MySpace, hi5 and mobile devices which use Google's Android platform.
San Francisco-based Citizen Sports was founded by Kerns and Jeff Ma in 2004.
(c) 2010 AFP
