14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo and Eurosport, a sport network provider, made a partnership to develop one of the largest sports portals on the Internet to provide quick access to news, discussions and other type of content provided by the TV channel. The product will be released in May 2007 containing both companies' logos and will be available only for UK, Germany and Italy. The two firms plan to develop the new portal using the powerful online services provided by Yahoo bundled with the sports content offered by Eurosport.
"Yahoo! regional vice president Dominique Vidal commented: "This is a collaboration that most sports fans have been dreaming about. Together we're able to satisfy their passion for sport by building user communities of interest around unrivalled professional content. Our collaboration with Eurosport is a great example of Yahoo!'s focus on creating leading online social environments. Also, the more fans we bring through our virtual turnstiles, the more advertisers will follow," mad.co.uk reported today.
At a closer look, Yahoo's partnership with Eurosport might look like a response to the agreement made by Google with Chelsea FC announced yesterday. Under the partnership, the search giant created a YouTube subdomain especially for the football club that will provide quick access and latest information about Chelsea and its players. It seems like the two companies are now planning to improve their online sports presence because it represents a domain where a limited number of firms are involved.
This is not the first time when Google and Yahoo are evolving side by side into a new area: some time ago, both companies tried to conquer the Asian market by making several partnership and acquisitions but they encountered the power of the most popular China service, Baidu. Although sports might not attract so many clients as other domains, we should expect for an interesting battle between Google and Yahoo for the leader position.