Hockeysfuture Purchased by CraveOnline - FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

Hockeysfuture.com, once a humble little hockey prospects site started by two brothers from Florida, has bloomed to become one of the biggest and baddest sports sites on the Inter webs. It's not just the focus on the prospects that propelled the site into a powerhouse, but its large community and forums, known as HF Boards. Remember the Rory Fitzpatrick All-Star campaign? (He Wu robbed!) That was all started and fueled by HF Boards readers.

Anyhoo, I was certainly shocked to see that Hockeysfuture has been bought out by a mainstream media corporation.

Cravemedia a leading lifestyle destination for men featuring video, movies, TV, music, sports, games, cars, humor and more, announced today that it has acquired #1 NHL draft and hockey prospect site, HockeysFuture and top hockey community destination, HF Boards. The acquisition reinforces CraveOnline's leadership position in the highly competitive online male youth market and supports CraveOnline's parent company, AtomicOnline in their strategy to acquire and grow a family of quality owned and operated affinity properties.

Yes, this company runs what is basically a Maxim-wannabe website, and one has to wonder if they'll try to dumb down the content of Gesture to make it more 'interesting' for the horny young men crowd. Are writers going to be asked to query John Tavares about his puck bunny exploits?

While it does seem strange that a 'mainstream' media company would want to purchase a hockey website, one just has to think from a marketer's perspective: Gesture = lots of teenage boys and young men = the perfect demographic for 'EXTREME' Cheetos. CraveOnline has no real interest in hockey, you can be sure of that.