If you haven’t visited Rant Sports yet, you’re missing out on a great fan driven sports website.
What is Rant Sports, exactly? Sports enthusiasts Brett Rosin and Grant Brown founded the company in February 2010. Rant Sports a sports blogging platform that consists of 250 paid writers and is driven by both its written and video content, specializing in all four of the major American professional sports as well as NCAA football and basketball.
CEO Brett Rosin told Chat Sports in a phone interview “I personally believe that (what makes Rant Sports so successful) is the writer talent. It’s the ability that our writers have to write a strong opinion about a topic they feel is newsworthy and worth writing about.”
With a staff of 250 writers, and over 80 million page views per month, it goes without saying that Rant Sports is a huge hit. Rosin believes Rant Sports is unique in the online sporting world because they have some of the most talented and opinionated writers on the web. “(Other sites) lack the opinion. They lack the interaction, they lack the ability to interact, and that’s really where we come along”, Rosin said. “So I would say a lot of our success is because of our writers.”
Rant Sports has been able to monetize through ad software Rosin and Brown have implemented to track writers’ revenue and how much traffic they get. This software was essential in allowing them to, as Rosin put it, “rebrand under one umbrella” from just one site to an entire media network consisting of Rant Sports, Rant Finance, Rant Political, and Rant Gaming. Rosin believes that creating an entire network has been key in marketing.
One other factor that contributes to the success of Rant Sports is their partnership with Yardbarker. “We’ve been part of the Yardbarker network for a couple of months”, Rosin said. “We don’t really rely on them for traffic, however they’re pretty essential to the monetization end, and that’s what the partnership is good for. They’re a big part of our monetization strategy and we’re pretty high on them.” Another factor that contributes to their success is their headlines being featured on Jim Rome’s Rome show on CBS. Rome’s staff picks articles from the Internet that they feel fit within the show, and Rant Sports is frequently featured. Rosin says it’s hard to tell if traffic spikes on the site are directly caused by Jim Rome’s promotion, but the promotion of their brand is very strong.
Currently, Rant Sports uses Wordpress to create and host their written content. The company also creates their own video content about their choice of topic from their high tech video studio to post on Rant Sports. “We try and keep it simple. It’s kind of been a strategy, and we’d like to get a little bit more into the technology as we move forward. We may have a little more revenue and a little more cash on hand to do so, but we’re pretty pleased with how things are going.”
In Rosin’s eyes, the most impressive thing Rant Sports has achieved thus far is their traffic. “You look at Bleacher Report, you look at SB Nation, you look at Yahoo and ESPN, and you’re starting to see Rant Sports creep up there. In an industry where people say it can’t be done, you know, there’s millions of sports blogs out there, there’s millions of people that share their opinion, and they don’t monetize, they don’t know enough about the industry to make that bed. So for us to jump in there at such a young age, and put together a team of people and advisors and a board that’s been very supportive and very helpful in building this thing, it’s definitely something we are proud of.”
The other major thing Rosin sees as the most impressive is Rant Sports’ ability to pay all of their writers. “In an industry where a lot of writers don’t get paid, it’s equally as gratifying that we can allow people to write about stuff they’re very passionate about, and then get paid for it. It just doesn’t happen enough in this industry, so f
or us to kind of come along and do that, it’s been awesome. I couldn’t be prouder of the team we’ve put together.”
Rant Sports is a very informative site. With many short and to the point articles, I, like many, many users before me, have found myself constantly checking Rant Sports for the latest news to see what their writers have to say. It’s very similar to sites such as Bleacher Report, SB Nation, Yahoo, and ESPN, and even our own Chat Sports, in that the writers have the ability to keep the user coming back for more.
What are some of the negatives about Rant Sports? Rosin had a few criticisms that he’s heard from users about the site. “We live in a day and age where everybody is on the internet all the time, and you’re just not going to keep everybody happy, it’s just not possible, unfortunately. We’ve had people talk about our font, some people don’t like our content, sometimes it’s slow, and we have to do some maintenance so it’s going to be down for 20 minutes, just some of that normal stuff that you’ll hear from users across the internet. But again, it comes with the territory and it’s not something we’re really too concerned about.”
Rosin says that one of the main things users want for his site is to be able to read an opinion and be able to either agree with it or disagree with it. Sites like ESPN can take care of game recaps, but the sports world needs more sites like Rant Sports to talk about why certain things happen and get good informative material.
One of the biggest things that has surprised Rosin is, as he put it, “some of those trolls”, or unruly users on the site. “They’ll come in, leave something pretty ridiculous and they’ll hide behind some fake screen name or something, and it’s always fun to laugh at, but I think it comes with the territory of being a bigger site.” (I couldn’t agree more, trolls always crack me up.)
Rosin says that Rant Sports has a big campaign coming through the NFL playoffs. He wouldn’t talk too much about it, but he does encourage you to check them out. “We’re not working with the NFL, but we’re doing something with another brand for the NFL playoffs. We’re pretty excited about it, so I’d definitely recommend checking us out over those couple of weeks.”
Check out Rant Sports!
