Subscribe to Cincinnati.com today and get three months for the price of one.

A Cincinnati-based startup is betting it can capitalize on legions of sports fans across the country through its web site that allows users to follow their favorite athletes and teams, from local high schools to the pros, and compare them across different eras and sports.

There are 173 million sports fans in the United States, according to the sports marketing company IMG College, and Statzhub founder George Thurner is betting there’s a large market that will pay $10 a month for the convenience of following multiple teams and players on one digital site that includes statistics, schedules and aggregated content.

Thurner’s also making an ambitious play for the high school sports market. Statzhub is providing statistics and schedules from 80 high schools in the region this fall, and has hired 300 reporters to cover freshman, junior varsity and varsity sports at 35 local high schools. Thurner’s goal is to have students providing coverage at all 80 schools by the end of the year, and then begin expanding the model outside of the region.

The potential was enough to secure an investment from Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which operates the web sites for MLB and its 30 teams. The undisclosed investment helped fund the redesign of the Statzhub site, which just relaunched as the company looks to start generating revenue. Paid members will be able to access all Statzhub content. The free membership offers unlimited access to Statzhub content for pro teams and athletes.

Thurner said MLB Advance Media’s expertise in monetizing content is as important as its financial commitment.

“They’re the first ones that hopped on controlling content and really monetizing their web site as far as professional sports organizations go,” he said.

Statzhub will give 20 percent of its profits back to the community once it begins generating revenue. For amateur sports, the money will go to programs affiliated with a particular program. For professional programs, the money will go to charities or foundations affiliated with a team or players. Statzhub customers decide where to direct the money.

Thurner is a local businessman whose family sold its building materials company, Adam Wholesalers, to the Anderson Window Co. in 1999. Thurner ran other family businesses under an umbrella called the Wakefield Holding Co. for eight years, then got the idea for Statzhub in 2008 when his oldest daughter, Alex, started playing lacrosse at Denison University.

In addition to tracking his daughter, Thurner wanted information about Denison’s opponents and to see how his daughter compared to other players. He found combing through multiple web sites for information to be a time-consuming, tedious process.

“Why do I have to go to 13 different web site to get data?” he said. “(Statzhub) is about the personalization of sports data.”

Sports statistics by themselves are not proprietary, so in 2008 Thurner began building the Statzhub platform, which scrapes its information from approximately 300,000 web sites. The site’s statistics date back to 1870.

Thurner’s team of 10 employees has also developed a proprietary tool that allows fans to compare players and teams from different eras, levels and even different sports. Want to compare Babe Ruth to Mickey Mantle? Joe Montana to Tom Brady? Your son or daughter to LeBron James?

Statzhub will give you the answer to which player is better. At least, it will give you a reasonably informed answer based on its statistics-based ranking system.

“Is it perfectly accurate? No. It’s really there just to start an argument or end an argument,” Thurner said laughing.

Thurner is in talks with the Reds, Bengals and local universities to promote the site to their respective fan bases. In the meantime, he’s focusing on his high school experiment. Statzhub’s reporters earn $15 for every event they cover, are eligible for a bonus if they cover 90 percent of their games, and earn a letter in the sports they cover.

Coverage includes in-game updates, photos, videos and 300-word stories from freshman, junior varsity and varsity games.

High school sports have long been the next frontier for sports web sites. There were 7.6 million high school athletes in the 2009-10 season, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Multiple outlets offer comprehensive statistical information and targeted coverage.

Covering teams from every sport is a challenge, however, given finite reporting resources and tiered levels of interest among the general public for various varsity high school sports, let alone junior varsity and freshman teams. Adding that content to Statzhub’s other offering creates additional value, Thurner said.

“If the whole model relied on us covering 49,000 high school games, it won’t work. But if we miss a game, we’ve still got something that’s worth $10 a month,” he said.

Ursuline Academy, which has about 350 athletes playing 15 sports, is among the schools working with Statzhub this year. Thurner has hired 12 reporters to cover the Lions this year.

The relationship could have financial benefits for Ursuline, but the school’s athletic director said she’s more excited about the opportunities for athletes who don’t typically receive media attention.

“It allows the parents and grandparents of those kids on the freshman team or JV team to read about them on the site,” said athletic director Diane Redmond. “It’s enough to keep families somewhat connected if they can’t be at every game, and it gives those younger teams some applause for the effort they put in.”