Rivals.com (stylized as rivals) is a network of websites that focus mainly on college football and basketball recruiting in the United States.
History
Rivals.com was founded in 1998 by Jim Heckman in Seattle, Washington, with a cadre of outside investors.[2] Heckman was once the son-in-law of Don James, the former head football coach at the University of Washington, where Heckman attended school and was later involved in a recruiting scandal.[3] Initially deriving revenue solely from advertising, Rivals.com later employed a subscription fee of $10.00 per month to users for access to the latest recruiting news and to participate in various message boards dedicated to schools covered by the network. Rivals was funded by money from venture capital firms including the venture funds of Fox and Intel.
Rivals acquired AllianceSports, a regional network that primarily covered college sports in the Southeast of the United States, in January 2000.[4] At its peak, Rivals.com employed close to 200 people, operated a network of 700 independent websites, filed for an initial public offering worth $100 million led by