Case Study: Bassmaster achieves a rapid, scalable site relaunch to handle massive traffic with Acquia Cloud

Bassmaster hooks new fishing site with Drupal and Acquia Cloud

Bassmaster.com, owned by the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society (B.A.S.S.), needed a full site re-launch after being separated from ESPN’s infrastructure. With nearly ten years of content to migrate, a tight budget and a six‑month deadline — plus the need to preserve user access and search ranking for high‑traffic tournament weekends — the new owners faced a major technical and operational challenge.

B.A.S.S. rebuilt the site on Drupal using the OpenPublish distribution, with design and development by Phase2 and hosting/support from Acquia Cloud and Acquia Network; ESPN IT also assisted with data migration. The site launched on schedule (May 1, 2011), now handles tens of thousands of media assets, averages 13+ million page views per month (with multi‑million tournament spikes and a 27 million‑page‑view month), and successfully scales on demand while staying within budget.

Bassmaster

Ned Desmond

President and Founder, Go Sportn