This is a cool story.
Bleacher Report was founded by four high school friends in 2006 who designed the sports site as a way for legions of rabid fans to offer up free content about their favorite teams. That site grew to a level where it had 10.1 million unique visitors in June, up from 7.9 million a year earlier, which places B/R on the top ten list of sports sites. (Yahoo! Sports led with 42 million unique visitors in June.)
This week, Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting acquired Bleacher Report for an undisclosed amount. The prices being reported are in the $200 million range.
What's unique about this, beyond the fact that it's an example of an idea taken by a start-up and turned into millions of dollars, is the continued significant evolution of user-generated content. Sites like Bleacher Report have been criticized for being nothing more than "content farms" but this acquisition is proof that there is a market for this type of website. Like the AOL-Huffington Post marriage that came before it, the Turner-B/R union is another example of a media behemoth taking a keen interest in user-generated content.
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