YourSports Launches Social Network For High School Athletes

By Amit Chowdhry ● Oct 25, 2007

Seattle, Wash. based YourSports launched a new website that focuses on social networking for amateur athletes. High school athletes are encouraged to create profile pages and upload video highlights from various sporting events. YourSports was founded by Chris McCoy and the company has raised $900,000 in funding.

Currently, YourSports has an 18 person team working away on building the company, including  Ben Joldersma, a former developer at Scout.com and Sean Sweeney, a former director at Media Zone.

Some of YourSports’ competitors include Rivals.com, MaxPreps, FanNation, and Takkle. Rivals.com was acquired by Yahoo, and MaxPreps was acquired by CBS Corp. Takkle is backed by Sports Illustrated, NYCIF, Greycroft Partners, and WMG Investments.

YourSports10 is a show that recognizes amateur athletes broadcasted through YourSports’ video platform. Some of YourSports’ Board of Advisors includes Stu Evey, co-founder and former Chairman of ESPN; Eddie Poplawski, leader merchandiser for Costco; Peter Everett, Senior Project Manager of Yahoo! Fantasy Sports; and Karen Northup, former CFO of Rivals.com and Scout.com.

Other Board of Advisor members includes John Castle from Univ. of Washington; Nate Miles, a VP at Eli Lilly; Bryan Brewer, President of Business Plans at Northwest and Bo Wandell, VP at Grid Networks.

Given the funding, the 18 person team, and the Board of Advisors that YourSports has, other amateur sports social networks have a good reason to fret. YourSports can potentially seize the market for high school sports. This gives enough of a reason for TAKKLE to proceed with caution.