National Signing Day seen a few surprise announcements, including one involving the services who cover those announcements.
CBS Sports announced Wednesday it has acquired Scout Media and will fold the brand into its existing properties -- which include everything under the CBS Sports umbrella, MaxPreps and 247Sports.
Terms of the sale were not disclosed, but The Street reports CBS Sports was not challenged by other bidders on its $9.5 million bid for Scout.
"We are very pleased to bring Scout Media into the CBS Sports Digital family and add their portfolio of team coverage to our premium, team-focused content offerings driven by 247Sports,” CBS Sports Digital general manager Jeffrey Gerttula said in a statement. “This acquisition will fit perfectly into our goal to provide engaging content, from the national to the team level, for sports fans, and will enable us to deliver more value to individual team fanbases across all screens and devices, as well as create exciting cross-platform advertising opportunities."
The release stated Scout's team-focused and recruiting coverage will "compliment" 247's existing sites, but what that exactly means is anyone's guess at this point. I've reached out to a person affected by the change, and the nuts-and-bolts of Scout and 247's coexisting has not been made clear to the rank-and-file at this point.
In hindsight, though, it was obvious 247 founder Shannon Terry's tweets praising Scout was more than just a little professional sportsmanship in an industry that's as competitive as the programs they cover.
CBS acquired 247 in January of last year and claimed a 43 percent spike in traffic for the site over the previous year.