AOL Latino Launches Social-Network Sports Blog Fanáticos.com

Spanish-Language Sports Site Kicks off with Coverage of the Olympic Games in Beijing

NEW YORK, NY.—AOL Latino, http://latino.aol.com, kicks off its coverage today of the Olympic Games in Beijing with the launch of Fanáticos.com, http://www.fanaticos.com, a sports blog destination written by a team of seasoned sports writers from Mexico, Argentina and the U.S. The site focuses on fútbol (soccer), baseball and boxing teams from the United States, Mexico, Latin America and Spain, and will include coverage throughout the duration of the games. Fanáticos.com is supported by AOL’s digital advertising business, Platform-A, http://www.platform-a.com, which will continue to offer relevant advertising opportunities in both display advertising as well as content-targeted links on the Web site.

“Latinos are passionate about sports and their favorite teams, and Fanáticos offers them a culturally relevant, Spanish-language outlet for their opinions,” said Miguel Ferrer, AOL Latino’s Director of Programming. “In fact, Fanáticos bloggers and the community will define the tone and flavor of the site.”

Fanáticos content is comprised of nine leading sports bloggers, whose expertise provides varied viewpoints into this highly anticipated, global competition. Some bloggers include:
• Pablo Seoane - a seasoned sports writer from Argentina with a history of covering Latin American sports trends and leading Latin American soccer tournaments such as Copa Libertadores and Copa Sudamérica.
• Juan Vené - has spent nearly 50 years covering baseball and is best known as Major League Baseball’s voice “en español”.
• Omar Porcayo - is a soccer fan and expert, who will cover the soccer games from Mexico City.

In addition to the bloggers and content at launch, within the next six months users of Fanáticos.com will find dedicated team and player pages for fútbol (soccer). These pages will include biographies, Relegence news feeds on players, blog postings and editorial articles on the individual players. In addition, Fanáticos.com will be launching a video search hub powered by Truveo and expects to add more bloggers. Fanáticos.com was modeled after the popular AOL Sports, http://sports.aol.com, site FanHouse.com, http://fanhouse.com, which recently received an EPpy Award for Best Sports Blog1.

AOL Latino recently expanded into Latin America with AOL Mexico, AOL Argentina, AOL Colombia, AOL Chile, and AOL Venezuela. In the U.S., AOL Latino is the leading bilingual portal for Hispanics with more than 1.5 million unique visitors, according to the June 2008 comScore MediaMetrix. In addition, the site’s page views have increased 88% year over year2.

1 Editor & Publisher Magazine, EPpy Award, April 2008
2 comScore MediaMetrix, June 2008; comScore Latino category is custom built based on a self-selected competitor list.