From Eric Fisher at the SportsBusiness Journal:

Yardbarker Blog Network Helps FoxSports.com to Record Traffic

FoxSports.com recorded 29.04 million unique visitors in October according to comScore, a new all-time site record for the third consecutive month and a total 91% higher than October ’09. The Yardbarker network of blog sites, part of FoxSports.com’s monthly traffic roll-up, posted 8.85 million unique visitors, also a new record and 171% above a year ago. FoxSports.com ranked third among U.S. sports sites for the month, behind Yahoo Sports at 51.58 million unique visitors, and ESPN.com at 42.74 million.

Based on the context above, it would seem that SBJ is directly attributing the Fox growth to the Yardbarker acquisition.  Congrats to our friends at YB and the bloggers in the network.

Buuuuttt…the question is, “is there cross pollination?“, or did Fox simply buy the numbers that Yardbarker, or more specifically the bloggers, were already putting up totally independent from anything FoxSports (as we know it) was/is doing.  Will the public, or at least the 8.85 million blog readers, know and associate the blog that they are reading with both YB and Fox, or will it just be a shell game with numbers?

The acquisition was a big deal for Yardbarker and it’ll be interesting to see how they build on it.  Keep an eye out.  And don’t discount Fox’s ability to see value in blogs and new media.