We have decided to ad a tab at the top of the page for Sports Websites, Blogs, and Domains for sale.  For fun the other day we were looking for sports sites that might be interesting purchases.  We know there are people out there that all they do is buy and sell websites so we are sure there is some money to be made in the niche of sports.   Here are some of the interesting sports websites/blogs/domains we saw for sale and some sites some of our contacts have for sale:

MMAninja.com: Info

Roto Network:  Info

Goal Tube:  Info

NBA Draft Press:  Info

NYYnews:  Info

NFL Draft Blitz: Info

Packers Forum: Info

Athlete Nightly:  Private: contact info{a}sportstechnow.com for more info

Synergy of Sports: Private: contact info{a}sportstechnow.com for more info

NewEnglandpatriotsplayofftickets.com (just domain): private: contact info{a}sportstechnow.com

NewEnglandpatriotssuperbowltickets.com(just domain): private: contact info{a}sportstechnow.com

Dallascowboyssuperbowltickets.com(just domain):private: contact info{a}sportstechnow.com

Dallascowboysplayofftickets.com(just domain): private: contact info{a}sportstechnow.com

If you have something you would like to post for sale and provide your contact inforamtion, send it over to info{a}sportstechnow.com and we will post it for free.  If you want to post it privately and use us as the go between it will cost you $20 a month.

Good luck purchasing.

*With Leather is now hosted at withleather.uproxx.com but the Alexa numbers are not accurate yet so we are still using their .com unique numbers.  Kissing Suzy Kolber is hosted at kissmesuzy.blogspot.com, Kissingsuzykolber.net, and now kissingsuzykolber.uproxx.com. Most of their traffic goes to the blogspot address so we used that address for stats. The same is true for Awful Announcing.  Mgoblog is only at Mgoblog.blogspot.com

For those of you who have visited our rankings before you will notice we are no longer using Compete.com.  Thanks to the newly released Google Ad Planner, we bring you new and improved rankings here at SportsTechNow.  Google Ad Planner is actually built for Media Planners but they also rank sites and give unique visitors for the previous month.  Our numbers will be based off of US numbers.  Their system should outperform Compete as Google can lean on their Toolbar and Google Analytics stats for site usage numbers.  We still need to use Alexa for sites that are tracked at a blogspot domain or now in the case of With Leather and Kissing Suzy Kolber at the uproxx.com domain.

New to the list this month are MixMakers.net, TheAngryT.com, and SportsCracklePop.com.  The amazing thing about SportsCracklePop is that they have only been around since April.

You can view why we pick these sites and not others at the bottom of April’s Top 25 Sports Blogs.

Soon the new Oklahoma City NBA team will be releasing their new name.  We decided here at SportsTechNow to do a little research on the most obvious domain names if the Oklahoma City team would be called the Outlaws.

Here are the names we came up with:

OKCOutlaws.com (Domain Squatter)
OKOutlaws.com (Forwards to Yahoo.com but flashes Yahoo Sports first)(Update 7/8/2008: Now Forwards to an Ebay Auction.  Our advice is don’t bid on it. Update 7/9/2008: Ebay auction has been taken down and now forwards to a Godaddy premium domain for $5000.  Our advice obviously is don’t buy it.)
OCOutlaws.com (Domain Squatter)
Oklahomacityoutlaws.com (Domain Squatter)
Oklahomaoutlaws.com (Domain Squatter)

OKCoutlaws.com and OklahomaCityOutlaws.com is owned by someone named Brian Campbell, OKOutlaws.com is owned by someone named Brandon Cecil but the domain now refers to Yahoo so one can only think that Yahoo Sports just purchased the name.  Besides that, the real interesting part is that OCOutlaws.com and OklahomaOutlaws.com is owned privately in Bellevue, WA.

Now this could all mean nothing but what are the odds that 2 of these domains would be owned privately in a city right next to Seattle.  We have emails out to Brian Campbell and Brandon Cecil to see if they have been contacted about their domain names.  If they have already been contacted, they probably won’t reply as  we are sure the NBA will make them sign something that says not to discuss anything.

We also know that the NBA now hosts all the team websites but team domain names can be very valuable.

Update: Twins Territory has done some additional research and found out that Brian Campbell owns many of the other rumored names.  Some of them are oklahomacitybarons.com, oklahomacitycyclones.com, Oklahomacitydrillers.com, Oklahomacityoutlaws.com, oklahomacitythunder.com, oklahomacitythunderbirds.com, and Oklahomacitytwisters.com.  Obvioulsy Brian is some sort of domain investor and is banking on getting the name correct.  The Whois report says he owns over 800 other names.

Update 7/7/2008: We received email back from Brandon Cecil that says “sorry, but i cannot comment on that at this time.”   We believe this pretty much verifies the NBA or Yahoo is working with Brandon about his domain name, OKOutlaws.com.  If not, he would of just said no one has contacted him instead of saying I can’t comment at this time.

Update 7/8/2008: As one of the commenter has pointed out Brandon Cecil’s domain has now forwarded to an Ebay auction.  We think this pretty much confirms this won’t be the NBA name.

Check out the first Oklahoma City Basketball Sports Blog at Oklahomacitybball.com vote on your choices.

Website: LocalReplay

Interview With: Galeal (Gil) Zino

Is their more then one founder? If so, who are they?

Jordan Hunter – founder responsible for hardware and database architecture.

Mike Jaffe – founder responsible for software development.

What is your background and qualifications?

50% sports fanatic, 50% technology geek, 100% entrepreneur. I’ve led software and technology teams for most of the last ten years, building solutions that range from patented VoIP software to LocalReplay.com. I was a year-round athlete at the high school and college levels, coach, athletic director and now parent to young athletes.

What does your website do?

LocalReplay enables everyone involved in local sports – from nationwide sports organizations to individual videographers – to build interactive, multimedia sports websites to meet their web needs. Teams use the LocalReplay platform to host their team site with schedules, statistics, rosters, etc. Organizations and events build sites to promote and market their organization or event, usually including videos, photos and social networking for their members. Individuals start sites that range from sharing highlights with grandma to online resumes for recruiters. The LocalReplay platform is the first to serve entire local sports communities, not just for example high profile athletes or pro sports fans.

How do you generate revenue? If through ads, what ad network do you use?

We are starting to roll out premium services such as custom media production and virtual training in which LocalReplay shares revenue with our partners. We also generate revenue through ads, using a mix of direct sales/sponsorships, local sales (via LocalReplay teams) and three ad networks, AdSense, Burst and soon SportsGenic.

How have your marketed your site?

We have a tremendous volunteer team that has been doing event-based marketing in a few cities. We’ve done limited online advertising (90% of our traffic is organic). Our best marketing has been the leagues and teams that love their LocalReplay sites – they spread the word for us.

Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?

We’ve raised $600,000 in Angel and founder capital.

Are You currently looking for funding?

Yes, we are currently looking at potential additional Angel funding and potential VC funding.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

LocalReplay is built on LAMP, using EC2 for computing and S3 for storage.

What is your favorite feature on your website?

The team websites have changed the game from the web 1.0 world. They are self-serve, interactive, support unlimited video and photo, include personal sites for everyone involved with the team, support social networking, and feature integrated communication solutions.

The communications aspect is often cited as a favorite from team admins – for example, a coach sends a text from the field to a LR short-code saying that the field is too wet to play and practice is canceled. LR then multicasts that out via text, email and web to everyone involved with the team. An entire phone tree replaced with one text message.

Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

We are near inflection points in a few critical areas including mobile broadband and photo/video technology. So services will emerge that we aren’t even thinking about today. From the LocalReplay perspective, we want to be “in the field of play” during their development, so we can provide the relevant ones to our users (directly or via partners). Virtual training is one service in the very near future that we are currently working on with a couple of partners. As an example of one further into the future:

1. You are at a game with 1000s of other fans. We know this via the GPS in your mobile device and/or your LocalReplay settings.

2. You take a photo/video with your digital camera/camcorder that has a WiFi or 3G-data chip. The photo or video is sent to LocalReplay via that data connection.

3. LocalReplay multicasts the photo or video to all the other fans at the game that have subscribed to the service, or help package it up for peer-to-peer delivery via a connection like WiFi or Bluetooth. Maybe with a link to an online poll – vote if it really was a touchdown. Instant replay for everyone at a local sports event without a multi-million dollar jumbotron. Personalized, social instant replay – watch it as often as you want, share it with people there or not there, comment on it, create a poll from it, save it anywhere, mash it up with another application, etc.

Website:  Yardbarker

Interview With:  Pete Vlastelica, CEO

What is the background of the founders of Yardbarker?

There are 4 of us. The three early founders were myself and two brothers, Jack and Jeff, Kloster. Jack and I met while getting our MBAs at UC Berkeley. Before Berkeley I worked at Disney doing large international content deals, and also at a boutique interactive marketing agency in New York. At Berkeley we wanted to develop a business plan that moved the ball forward in a segment of digital media and we thought sports medias a category was ripe for innovation. We hooked up with our fourth co-founder, Mark Johns, who was the first engineer at Ofoto, which became Kodak Gallery.

Are you Venture backed?

Yes. For the first twelve months we operated on a round of funds raised from friends and family. Then about a year ago we took money from a group of angel investors. This March, we raised capital from Draper Fisher Jurvetsen.

Are you looking at expanding your funding?

Not sure

How many unique visitors are you getting a month?

5 million monthly uniques across the Yardbarker Network.

Is Fox Sports your only content deal? How does it work?

FoxSports.com syndicates articles and videos from the Yardbarker Network. Every publisher in our network has the opportunity to opt-in to this program and take advantage of the extra distribution. The articles that Fox publishes include links back to both Yardbarker and the original article on the publisher’s blog.

How does the Yardbarker Ad Network work?

The publishers in our network assign us the responsibility of representing their sites to brand advertisers. We offer advertisers a very efficient way to reach the large collective audience that hangs out on all the sites in our network. We split the revenue with our publishers and everybody wins.

Was the Yardbaker Ad Network apart of your original business plan?

No, actually it wasn’t. As with most startups, our business model was part of an evolution. . Our site actually started out as something like a “Digg for Sports.” We found that most of the people using it were sports bloggers who were promoting their sites, and it turned out some of the bloggers in this group were looking for a better way to make money from their sites. That was the beginning of the Yardbarker Network.

What is your favorite part about running Yardbarker?

Building the team. We have grown from 5 employees to 20 employees over the past year, and every individual at the company is outstanding. We have been able to build our team while not losing the passion that was there when we started. We’re proud of that.

How have you had so much success with Athlete Bloggers?

We learned that athletes were looking for something like this. There is a new generation of athletes that don’t want to just be quoted in a newspaper article – they want to be able to tell their story on their own terms and connect with fans in an authentic way. We always stress the importance of staying dedicated to their blogs. We tell them that it’s worse to start a blog and then quit than to never blog at all.

Was Greg Oden your first big athlete blogger?

You could say that. John Lackey was our first professional athlete blogger and Chris Henry (the running back for the Titans) was our very first athlete blogger leading up to last year’s NFL Draft.

How are the athletes paid?

We share advertising revenue with our athlete bloggers.

Have advertisers sponsored individual athlete blogs?

Yes, quite a few. Playstation sponsored Carmello Anthony’s blog; 2k Sports sponsored Greg Oden’s Blog, and Modells, a sporting goods company in Boston, sponsored Rajon Rondo’s blog, among others.

What type of technology do you use?

Yardbarker is custom built using Ruby on Rails

Any Bold Predictions for the future of sports and technology?

The definition of a Social Network is going to change – it’s no longer about being on one site where everyone else has to come visit you to hang out. Social functionality will start to spread across the web via a patchwork of sites with like-minded audiences. Widgets will get better. No matter where you are on the web you will feel like you’re in the social environment that you choose to be in. If I want to talk sports, I should be able to do that with my friends whether I’m on ESPN, Facebook, Yardbarker, or some small blog. The web itself is the ultimate social network.

(We had the pleasure of doing this interview over the phone with Pete and we thoroughly enjoyed it.  He seemed to understand his market extremely well and as long as Yardbarker can keep bringing in the advertisers we see them being dominant force in the sports space online)