People who love sports...

Climbing the Rank(ing)s

When I started Sportgenic (formerly Active Athlete) two years ago, I had grandiose visions of success--like many other ambitious entrepreneurs. But frankly, I could not have predicted that, in such a short span, our company would evolve into one of the industry's major players.

Our press release today highlights the tremendous growth we've experienced the past 24 months. With more than 250 member Web sites and more than 20 million unique users, our network of online publishers is now listed by comScore as #7 in online sports media destinations, surpassing heavyweights such as ESPN.com and CBS Sports. (Click on the enclosed chart for comparative stats).

In my mind, there's no slowing us down. I want to thank every single Sportgenic employee for their "blood, sweat and tears" over the past several months, as well as our hundreds of business partners who work closely with us to create compelling, relevant content for sports enthusiasts of all types.

Active Athlete is now officially Sportgenic

It's been an exciting few days for the company. Yesterday we visited the big brands at iMedia's Brand Summit in Florida. We had the opportunity to tell our story - and it was well received. I felt very proud of the company. The good folks at Catalyst SF did us right by assisting with our script and presentation. (Thanks, Guys.) Today I'm off to speak at the OMMA Behavioral conference organized by Steve Smith. It's a very thoughtful agenda and we're glad to be a part of the program.

And last but certainly not least - I'm excited to announce that effective today, Active Athlete, Inc. has changed its name to Sportgenic.

We originally selected the name Active Athlete because of our belief that the logical segmentation in sport was “doing” versus “viewing.”  That the key split among these people was to say that there are people who participate in sport, and people who watch, and that the groups were quite different. However, we’ve discovered through extensive research and thoughtful data analysis that sport enthusiasts can be doers, viewers, or as is most common, both.

The idea’s pretty simple: man and woman don’t live by triathlon and bonsai pipeline alone, but rather have rich, diverse lives.  And as many of our advertisers have come to see, sports enthusiasts have a propensity to be just as passionate about brands that match their values and support their interests, as they are about their sporting interests.

These are people with sports in their genes. People who have an intense passion for sport. Hence, our new name – Sportgenic.

Our press release offers more details: http://www.sportgenic.com/newsroom/app-news/0/21/0/

Creating an Even Greater Buzz

Today we celebrate a very exciting milestone in our  company’s relatively short history, not just for our dedicated employees but, most important, for our customers. With the acquisition of GolfBuzz, which we  announced this morning, Active Athlete has furthered its commitment to help both  advertisers and publishers connect with sports  enthusiasts.

Over the past two years, I’ve watched the development of  many wonderful online communities and, at the same time, technology advancing at  a rapid pace. It’s in the spirit of helping these communities continue to flourish that we continue to empower publishers with new loyalty-building and  revenue-generating tools. Such is the case with GolfBuzz’s proven content  management, social media and widget technology platform, which Active  Athlete will extend across its network of more than 180 sites, benefiting virtually any community of sports enthusiasts.

By continuing to combine our domain knowledge with emerging technology--for example, we recently leveraged advanced text messaging and Web browsing to engage a mobile audience for three Ironman events--Active Athlete is delivering innovative solutions that drive significant value for consumers, advertisers and publishers alike.

That’s what we’re all about, and our acquisition of GolfBuzz is testament to this. I encourage you to read more about the goodness of GolfBuzz in today’s press release. We are extremely excited to have their people and technology now part of the Active Athlete family!