While there have been deafening rumors around the web that Yahoo! was planning on dumping the Rivals brand to whatever company or individual was willing to pay the most, recent revelations have come to light that the company is considering dropping the Rivals name OR combine it with Yahoo to improve the Yahoo brand awareness upon the product.
Rivals, which was acquired by Yahoo! in 2007 for $100 million, has lacked innovation in the space (compared to newcomers 247 Sports and ESPN Recruiting) and has been bleeding subscribers while costs have been increasing in the past couple years - neither which are sweet music to the ears of new CEO Marissa Mayer.
Though they paid 9 figures for the company 7 years ago, rumors have swirled that Yahoo! would be willing to unload the brand for as little as $10 million, a 90% write off. Private equity firms have expressed some interest, while some have also whispered that 247 Sports CEO Shannon Terry, who also founded and sold Rivals, was interested in buying back his legacy brand and incorporate into his new "hot" property 247 Sports.
In an effort to gauge user "pushback" to a name change or logo change, Yahoo! is asking Rivals users how a name or logo change incorporating Yahoo! into the Rivals brand, or perhaps replacing it.
The image below is the options users have to choose from. Come on... seriously? More than one font on a logo is seen as bad design by most accounts.... some of these have 3 fonts, while one has 4 fonts! There is a reason that Yahoo has struggled for a decade. They have a chance to put resources into this premium sports brand and modernized their efforts (and potentially own the recruiting/pay site space) but choose to put lipstick on a pig.
(design students everywhere are shuttering in disgust)
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