MADRID, Spain — General managers, agents, sportswriters and knowledgeable fans of the National Basketball Association log on every morning to Hoopshype.com for the latest in news and gossip.
The pro basketball Web site has influenced player moves, stoked rivalries and now attracts more than a half-million unique visitors a month after starting from scratch in 2002. NBA coaches read it to check in on their job status, and rumors posted there have put trades in motion.
"It's required reading for every member of my staff," says Bill Duffy, an NBA agent in Walnut Creek, Calif.
It's also been a mystery. For all its popularity, few had any idea who was behind it.
After six years of anonymity, the architects of Hoopshype.com have come forward, and they turn out to be a surprising squad: three 29-year-old men working from their apartments in Spain. Collectively, they've been to two NBA games, although they watch on TV. One of them doesn't even like the sport.
How three Spaniards became the town criers of a major North American sports league is another reminder of how the Internet is helping displace traditional reporting with specialized sites and forums that feature a mix of rumors, news and opinion. "I like the fact that what I do has an impact on the NBA outside of my country," says Hoopshype founder Jorge Sierra. He runs the site with two partners, Angel Marin and Raul Barrigon.
Sierra created Hoopshype.com six years ago in a bedroom of his parents' home in Valladolid, a town 125 miles northwest of Madrid. The popularity of basketball began swelling here after Spain reached the finals in the 1984 Olympics.
In 2001, Sierra took a job writing for a women's basketball Web site. He says he was shocked to discover that it was making money, so he bought a manual on how to create a Web site and launched Hoopshype.com.
It began as a technical and financial disaster, crashing once a week and drawing no advertisers. Sierra eventually found a stable of U.S. writers to contribute articles at $25 a shot. He used his connections with European pro basketball teams to land interviews with players who were drawing attention from U.S. teams.
Even when he was running the site by himself, Sierra rarely rose before noon. He didn't have to. His time zone gave him a five-hour head start on his closest U.S. rivals. He used the time to scour the Web for the latest NBA news so that his summary was ready when U.S. agents and NBA executives start checking the site in the morning.
"I think everybody reads it," says Lon Babby, a Washington-based agent who represents 19 NBA players.
The hub of the site is "Rumors," which are harvested from hundreds of sources, including U.S. and international newspapers, as well as other Web sites and bloggers. Hoopshype taps a lengthy source list of agents, players and executives to confirm stories and break news.
What most distinguishes Hoopshype is the critical mass of movers and shakers who read it daily.
The site's profits began dribbling in about a year after the launch. Two years later, Dime magazine, a basketball publication in the U.S., agreed to sell ads on Hoopshype for a split of the revenue. That arrangement yielded a deal with Nike in late 2004, providing Sierra with enough money to move out of his parents' house and into an apartment.
Last year, Fantasy Sports Ventures went looking for him. FSV, based in New York, is building a network of Web sites for advertisers that deliver readers bundled by sport and topic. The firm, which had been acquiring sports Web sites, wanted a basketball site with broad reach. When its representatives started asking NBA insiders to name the sport's most influential Web site, their answer — more often than not — was Hoopshype.com.
It took three months for FSV executives to track down Sierra and arrange a meeting. In December, they agreed to purchase Hoopshype for a price in the "low-seven figures," according to Chris Russo, the chief executive. Sierra received the lion's share of the money, but says he insisted on sharing the proceeds with Barrigon and Marin, as well as retaining them as full-time employees. The three men continue to run the site.