USA Today Sports Media Group announced its purchase of MMAJunkie.com. The purchase includes “its related editorial assets across all platforms, including its daily radio show.”
Via USA Today press release:
With more than one million unique visitors per month, MMAjunkie.com is one of the leading online news destinations for the sport, as well as a content partner for several print, online and TV outlets. It also produces the daily podcast/radio show “MMAjunkie.com Radio,” with a TV simulcast syndicated through Fight Now TV.
MMAjunkie.com will retain its unique URL, and will also be rolled in to the USA TODAY Sports Media Group’s online coverage at MMA.USATODAY.com by mid-December 2011.
Payout Perspective:
Not only does USA Today acquire MMA Junkie, but Vox Media (parent to SB Nation) purchased MMA Fighting earlier in the week. The media consolidation can be a positive sign or negative depending on what your take is on MMA media. These acquisitions show that mainstream media groups see mixed martial arts as a growing industry as evidenced by the purchase of these sites. The MMA Fighting acquisition is interesting considering SB Nation has 3 other quality web sites in its stable. With the UFC deal, Fox legitimized the sport and tacitly made it acceptable for other mainstream media to look into the value of MMA. It will be interesting to see how much the sites will change in terms of content and look. Will MMA be covered by more mainstream sports media types? Both groups state that the sites will be “business as usual” as far as content.
We will see how each progresses and evolves under its new ownership.
Think this is a good move for both companies.
USA Today already had a deal with Bloodyelbow.com doing the monthly MMA rankings.USA Today is expanding its MMA media and that’s good for the sport.
Bad move.
Ever since the purchase, MMA Junkie now requires readers to fill out consumer surveys before reading on. I stopped going there a while ago.
This is just another case of limitless greed and stupid marketing ruining another MMA site.
The list is getting shorter of good MMA sites–good meaning the MMA fan is only partially inundated with ads.
Now, most sites literally freeze as they try to load all the flashing ads with black holes written in Java script waiting for the unwary mouse clicker.
I don’t listen to the radio any more.
I don’t watch regular TV any more.
Now I don’t even go to YouTube any more, since Google bought it and ads appear for every video.
I don’t watch videos on News sites since every single 2-3 minute video has an ad.
I would be willing to watch a limited number of commercials for a reasonable amount of good content–but that’s not how it works. Whenever there is success in a medium, very soon ads supersaturate the medium.
MMA Junkie is just another in a long string of sites which have become advertising radioactive and unreadable, unwatchable, and indigestible.
I will just take these ad-greedy sites off my favorites list permanently.
MMA Junkie is dead to me now.