AOL Buys Fantasy Football Site Fleaflicker
This story was written by David Kaplan.
AOL has acquired Fantasy Football site Fleaflicker for an undisclosed amount, Mediapost reported. The site will be added to AOL Sports, whose existing fantasy football offerings were described as "modest" by Bill Wilson, VP for programming at AOL (NYSE: TWX). The company will roll out Fleaflicker under the AOL Sports banner by July. The acquisition comes just as AOL veteran Lewis Dvorkin is leaving his post as SVP, AOL News and Sports. Dvorkin was one of the architects behind AOL's push to make the portal channels more "blog-like" and had also helped create new sites like AOL Sports' Fanhouse channel.
Apart from all of AOL's purchases on the ad side under Platform-A, the Time Warner unit has also been trying to build up traffic to the sites on the portal side. Earlier this month, AOL updated its portal's blog structures by forming the AOL Technology Network, which now house its related Weblogs Inc. sites like Engadget, Switched, TUAW, and several others. It's also been developing a female lifestyle site as a counterpart to its male targeted entertainment channel Asylum. A WSJ piece noted that the year-long growth strategy was starting to show some traction, as traffic to AOL's various sites - such as the AOL Money & Finance, entertainment, travel - came in at 56.5 million unique visitors, according to comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) Media Metrix, for a 15 percent gain.
By David Kaplan