Sports blog central, YardBarker raises another $1.5 million

Sep 10, 2009 13:43 GMT  ·  By

After previously raising around $6 million on the stock market from various investors, YardBarker, the web's biggest sports-related blogging platform, has managed to pull in another $1.5 million, a recent SEC filing shows. No details about this latest transaction have been released by YardBarker officials, but previous contributors might still be involved in this transaction. On the first round, companies like DFJ, Baseline Ventures and Labrador Ventures contributed through the help from individual sponsors like Russ Siegelman and Jarl Mohn.

This is a curious move, since YardBarker already racked up quite a sum the last time it went fund raising, and a logical question might pop in someone's mind: what is it doing with all that money? Yes, one can observe that the website is still in Beta development, but unless it is building WordPress itself back there, this huge amount of cash might not be just for the platform's development.

Sure, it is recognized for giving away lots of prizes to its users, but it also calls itself (rightfully so) a sports ad network, benefiting from some beautiful money from that section of the business. One can just wonder.

In the recent months, YardBarker managed to pull in quite a big gathering, weighing around 1 million unique visitors per month, with a maximum of 1.5 million in March of this year. Famous sport athletes have been keeping their blogs on YardBarker, with the likes of: Chris Cooley (Washington Redskins TE), Donovan McNabb (Philadelphia Eagles QB), Joe Rogan (UFS fighter), Phil Hughes (New York Yankees pitcher) or Terrell Suggs (Baltimore Ravens LB) just to mention a few.

While the platform has taken pride in collecting big sport names, recently, it has concentrated more and more in adding more regular users to its blog platform, while also expanding its great sport news platform. For now, traffic seems to be in continuous decline, going down from March's 1.5 million mark to about 800,000 in August, and this cash injection seems to be on the outside, more of a lifeline than an investment.