ESPN acquires Scrum.com
ESPN announced that it acquired a Rugby news site, Scrum.com, which attracts half a million visitors a month during the peak season. With this acquisition, ESPN has again reached out to attract a foreign audience of sports fans loyal to a particular website. Previously, ESPN acquired Cricinfo.com, a popular cricket website, and they manage ESPNSoccernet.com, a multi-language soccer website.I wouldn’t expect to see major changes to the Scrum.com now that it is owned by ESPN. The website became popular due to its unique content and perspective, and I doubt ESPN would want to mess with the format. I expect that they will integrate some of their content and add links to their own site as well as Scrum.com to encourage viewers to add ESPN to their daily “must read” list. This will help lengthen the amount of time users stay on the website, which is a good way to increase advertisers’ value and ultimately spend.