Fox Sports Adds Fanhood to Growing Digital Portfolio

FOX Sports Digital has announced that it has acquired assets of sports start-up Fanhood and hired its core team, including founder and CEO Brandon Ramsey. According to terms of the agreement, FOX Sports Digital acquired Fanhood’s assets, including all of the intellectual property, and hired employees.

In his new role as VP of platform engineering, FOX Sports Digital, Ramsey will be charged with running personalization and social product development for FOX Sports Digital. Ramsey and his team will be based in San Francisco and will join with the personnel at FOX Sports-owned Yardbarker to create a platform technology center for FOX Sports Digital in the Bay Area.

“FOX Sports Digital continues to invest in building a world-class technology leadership team, and the Fanhood acquisition deepens our product development expertise,” says Pete Vlastelica, SVP of FOX Sports Digital.  “We are excited about combining the FOX Sports Digital and Fanhood teams to amplify our efforts to help users discover and share sports content in new and unique ways.”

“It’s an exciting time to join FOX Sports Digital,” says Ramsey. “We believe in developing applications that make following sports with your friends easier and more fun.  We look forward to applying our expertise to FOX Sports Digital’s vision of creating a personalized, socially integrated content platform.”

Ramsey and his team will report to Ben Gerst, SVP of Platform Development.  Gerst joined FOX Sports Digital in June from the New York Times, where he served as Executive Director of Platform Technologies. Ramsey himself previously served as head engineer at Yahoo! Shopping, Yahoo! Deals, and Yahoo! Travel, while members of Fanhood’s leadership team have worked previously at Yahoo!, Zynga & Slide.