Updating a Leading Sports News Platform

RIVALS / YAHOO!

The image showcases a Yahoo Rivals webpage featuring a sleek black and yellow interface, displaying various sports headlines, scores, and athlete images against a dark background for a modern, dynamic appearance.
The image showcases a Yahoo Rivals webpage featuring a sleek black and yellow interface, displaying various sports headlines, scores, and athlete images against a dark background for a modern, dynamic appearance.
The image showcases the Yahoo! Rivals sports news and recruitment website interface, featuring a trend highlights section with various articles on college sports, team rankings, and athlete profiles for engaging updates in the sports industry.

Rivals.com is a popular Yahoo-owned sports website and publishing network focused on college football and basketball recruiting. The Rivals team brought Grio on to execute a comprehensive site update that included modernizing the site design and creating a responsive, mobile-friendly web app.

THE CHALLENGE

  • Modernize Rivals’ Appearance, Performance, and Tooling

Rivals wanted to improve overall site performance, boost user growth, and make it easier to publish articles and image galleries across the Rivals.com network. To accomplish these goals, Grio’s team of designers and developers needed to integrate seamlessly with Rivals’ product owners and stakeholders, who are spread out across the United States.

OUR APPROACH

  • Multifunctional Team

  • Close Collaboration

  • Continuous Delivery

Grio and Rivals collaborated to create a new site look and feel, update the Rivals.com code base, and develop streamlined, user-friendly publishing tools. The two teams moved the project forward quickly through weekly planning sessions, daily scrums, constant online communication, and frequent retrospectives, which enabled rapid decision-making and iteration.

RESULTS

  • Better Site Performance

  • 12x Increase in Site Traffic

  • User-Friendly Publishing Tools

  • New Mobile Experience

The new Rivals.com codebase performs beautifully under heavy traffic—and the new homepage has seen a twelvefold traffic lift since the update. Rivals.com publishers now operate more efficiently thanks to modern, user-friendly publishing tools, and mobile users can easily access and navigate the site through apps for both iOS and Android.