Yahoo Inc. said on Wednesday it would acquire Rivals.com, a site for fans of college and high school teams, bolstering the Internet media company`s place as the top U.S. sports site in audience terms.

Besides bringing Yahoo a base of 2 million to 2.5 million fans of high school and college football and basketball, the deal also is a measure of Yahoo`s commitment to its media business following top-level management changes this week.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Rivals.com, which is based in Brentwood, Tennessee, outside of Nashville, has developed an avid base among hardcore sports fans since it was founded in 2001. It operates 105 college team sites and another 48 regional sites for high school fans to track local sports, Rivals Chief Executive Shannon Terry said.

Rivals.com counts more than 180,000 subscribers. Its revenue comes from subscribers, advertising and e-commerce conducted on the site.

It will function as an independent unit in Yahoo Sports, a media site which attracts a monthly audience of 15 million visitors, according to audience measurement firm comScore Inc.

Yahoo Sports, which is advertising-supported but has a sizable subscriber base for its fantasy sports league, recently surpassed the audience of its biggest competitor, ESPN.com, which has about 12.7 million users, comScore says.

It was formed when founders of a predecessor company, Rival Networks, bought out owners of a failing dot-com. Rival Networks was first founded in 1996. Rivals.com has eight investors, four of whom work for the company, including Terry.

In April, technology blog TechCrunch reported that Yahoo was considering buying Rivals.com for a "possible $100 million." The blog also highlighted Terry`s role in a stock promotion scheme in the mid-1990s and reported that his business dealings had led previous merger deals to fall apart.

According to a 1998 litigation document from the Securities and Exchange Commission, Terry was involved in a widely publicized "pump and dump" stock scheme in a tiny company known as Systems of Excellence. Terry was a principal at a stock promoter, called SGA Goldstar Research.

In a joint interview, Yahoo officials and Terry declined to comment on his prior business dealings.

According to his company biography, Terry was co-captain of the basketball team at Lipscomb University, where his team won 145 games over four years, a college basketball record.

On Monday, Yahoo Chairman and Chief Executive Terry Semel had resigned as CEO and would be replaced by the Sunnyvale, California-based company`s co-founder, Jerry Yang. Semel will remain as non-executive chairman of the board of directors.
sections: Economics