ESPN acquires European racing website
Racing-Live.com covers Formula 1 (F1-Live.com), Moto GP & Superbike (Moto-Live.com), Rally (Rally-Live.com), off road Rallies (Raid-Live.com), Endurance Sports-Cars and Kart racing. The site provides fans around the world locally tailored up-to-the-minute news and information in English, French, Japanese, Italian, German and Spanish. Racing-Live.com has earned a loyal following of three million unique users per month.
“Motor racing has a global fan base, and this agreement will allow us to serve fans more motor sports coverage than ever before," said Russell Wolff, Executive Vice President and Managing Director, ESPN International. “We continue to build our online business through key acquisitions like Cricinfo.com and Scrum.com while expanding our current offerings including fantasy and localized versions of ESPNsoccernet.com. Serving sports fans online is priority for us and this acquisition complements our extensive NASCAR and Classic motor sports coverage across our multi-media platforms around the globe."
“I’m delighted that ESPN now offers sports fans world-class online coverage of football, rugby, cricket and motor racing," said Lynne Frank, Managing Director of ESPN, Europe, Middle East and Africa. “Racing-Live.com is a leader in its category and has built a solid base from which to further develop our digital motor sports offering. We are particularly pleased that Racing-Live.com joins ESPN in the middle of another fantastic Formula 1 season."
Michel Marvie, founder and Managing Director of RACING-LIVE S.A., added, “Launched in 1995, Racing-Live.com has established a strong and growing presence among worldwide motor racing fans, with live updates and news from F1, Moto GP and the world of Rally and Endurance racing.
ESPN has established itself as a leader in the digital space and is the ideal place for the next stage in the development of Racing-Live."
ESPN’s digital media initiatives combine to deliver an industry-leading combination of live and on-demand sports events; up-to-the-minute sports news and information; scores, statistics and analysis; extensive on-demand and downloadable video and audio programming; fantasy sports, and video games across Web, mobile and other non-linear platforms.
ESPN Digital media properties are leading sports destinations: online- (ESPN.com); mobile (wireless Web sports site mobile.espn.com); radio (the most listened-to online sports radio destination ESPNRadio.com); the leading soccer, cricket and rugby news and information sites (ESPNsoccernet.com, Cricinfo and scrum.com); leading fantasy games that are played by millions of fans each year; one of the most successful premium content services on the Web (ESPN Insider); the most downloaded sports content on the iTunes Store, and a one-of-a-kind in-game content integration platform appearing in many of the most popular sports video games.
ESPN has expansive agreements with NASCAR to telecast or syndicate live races worldwide and ESPN Classic fans can see vintage F1 and Rally races in Europe.