Sports Aggregator is an online service that simplifies the process of finding current news and content about your favorite team. The internet is a big place, and we help make it smaller with the help of our web team, dedicated sports fans, and sophisticated technology. Millions of people trust our sites to cut through the noise and deliver comprehensive coverage of their team.
Our Network
Sports Aggregator operates a growing network of team-focused sites covering professional sports across North America. Originally founded in Canada with a focus on Canadian teams, we now serve fans from coast to coast.
Our network includes teams in Toronto (Blue Jays, Raptors, Maple Leafs), Chicago (Cubs, White Sox, Bulls, Blackhawks, Bears), Montreal (Canadiens), Vancouver (Canucks) and more. We aim to be your one-stop destination for comprehensive team coverage.
How It Started
The first version of what would become Blue Jays Aggregator launched around 2008 using Yahoo Pipes to filter RSS feeds from newspapers, national media, and blogs. We used keyword filtering to isolate team-specific content and added author attribution to create a more useful feed reader experience.
The concept proved valuable, and in 2010 we purchased a domain and built a website to share with friends. Word spread organically, and within a few years, thousands were visiting daily without any promotional spending.
As we grew, RSS feeds alone couldn't provide the comprehensive coverage we envisioned. We developed a custom web crawler designed to discover substantially more content while remaining completely unobtrusive to the sites we monitor. We built in sport and team-specific intelligence along with custom configurations for each source, allowing us to make highly targeted checks and handle the processing entirely on our servers.
More Than Just a List of Links
WWhile our homepage appears as a straightforward list of links, significant technology powers what you see. Our proprietary crawler and curation system is custom-built from the ground up, fundamentally designed to understand the sports media landscape.
Comprehensive Coverage
We aim to find and aggregate virtually everything published about each team, mirroring the full scope of media coverage. Breaking news, analysis, opinion pieces, podcasts, videos—all in one place.
Intelligent Prioritization
While our goal is comprehensiveness, we use sophisticated algorithms to determine placement. Original reporting and in-depth analysis receive more prominent positioning, while duplicative coverage appears lower.
Supporting Content Creators
We emphasize original content, its authors, and their outlets—especially local journalism and independent creators. We make attribution as clear as possible and always link directly to the original source. Over the years, we've worked with countless content creators to ensure their work is represented accurately on our sites.
Our Process
When we add a new content source, we build an extensive custom configuration that maps out the source in detail. We develop a crawling strategy and establish criteria for content organization. Some key questions we consider:
- What type of outlet and content is this?
- What's the least intrusive discovery method?
- Does the content have proper attribution?
- Is this local journalism or independent media?
- What's the nature and length of the content?
- Is there an RSS feed or API available?
- Does content have unique identifiers?
- Is this content from a newswire service?
- Is content published across multiple sites?
- How does this fit broader team coverage?
Each custom configuration includes a discovery method and criteria that must be met before content appears on our sites. Some setups are simple, others are complex—it depends entirely on the source and the nature of its content. Questions about unique identifiers, author attribution, and content length help us organize and present content effectively without excluding anything of value.
Respectful Crawling
We're committed to being completely unobtrusive. Unlike typical crawlers that follow every link on a page, we employ laser-focused strategies to retrieve content as directly as possible.
Our throttling approach: When we crawl multiple pages at any site, we wait at least 2 minutes between requests (and typically closer to one hour). Standard crawling etiquette suggests 1-2 second delays—we insist on timeframes over 100× longer.
We also actively engage with content creators whose work we index. Over the years, we've adjusted descriptions, naming conventions, and presentation based on creator feedback to ensure they're satisfied with how their content appears on our sites.
Learn More
Visit the Sports Aggregator Help section to learn more about what we do.
