The Atex Blog

Using Sports to Generate Revenue

So the other day I read a very interesting article, from a very interesting conference, on a very interesting subject matter. I read that a WAN-IFRA conference was held recently, on the subject of optimizing sports revenue. Experts from around the globe gathered and discussed how newspapers could generate more revenue by capitalizing on their sports sections and websites.

To start, I'd like to ask: Who knew there was a WAN-IFRA conference on how to optimize sports revenue in the first place? I certainly didn't. If I did, I would have done some pretty hard lobbying in order to attend. Granted, it probably wasn't the ‘meet and greet' with the likes of Michael Jordan or Wayne Rooney I envision, but it probably was interesting none the less.

In reading reports from the conference I didn't know about and therefore didn't attend, I came across a few of the points made by Stanislas Sabatier, a senior consultant at SapienS&Sacicle. Apparently, he gave a good account of ways newspapers could leverage their sports sections to drive readership and raise revenue.

The first example he used was ESPN, which he saw as taking an important step forward into local markets with the creation of city-specific microsites. Currently available for Dallas, Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles, the sites provide articles, video and community features relating to the local city's sports teams. In Chicago, Sabatier pointed out, the microsite's audience has already surpassed that of the of the city's newspapers, generating more visitors in an area that was thought to be saturated with media outlets.

Another example Sabatier used dealt with college sports. Citing statistics on the college sports cite Rivals.com, Sabatier demonstrated how college sports is an area newspapers are failing to capitalize. Rivals.com is a college sports site that provides articles and information on local teams by using a network of college sports sites and more than 300 writers consisting of journalist, bloggers and local specialists. In 2007, Yahoo bought the website for $100 million and today Rivals.com generates more than 12 million unique visitors with 200,000 subscribers paying $99.95 a year, or $9.95 a month for the site's services. 

Now, a media company could say that niche or microsites are great in theory-that they attract visitors and increase page views, but they're also expensive to develop and require extra staff to keep them updated and fresh. Such a thought process might be true depending on the content management systems being used. Take a publisher operating an open source system. The templates and elements for a microsite probably have to be developed internally or outsourced to a third-party group, which in either case takes time and money. Then if the Web system isn't integrated to the editorial system, content has to be created and formatted separately before it can be used online.

For a newspaper using a proprietary system, one that's fully integrated with the editorial department, the picture is much different. First, some of the development costs are mitigated by the fact that a proprietary system has microsite templates and designs straight out-of-the-box and can be launched almost immediately with limited development. Plus, being integrated with the editorial system, allows editors to control the content so that they can reposition and push stories to the Web from within the editorial system. This streamlines the use of content and requires less people to manage the site. If fact, a magazine publisher I spoke to recently has been able to manage one of its microsites using just three people.

Of course it's up to the media companies out there to decide which model will work best for them. I think the points Sabatier makes hold water for a lot more areas outside sports. Many niche topics could be ripe for a specific microsite depending on the audience. Then it comes down to content-content and presentation-content, presentation, and a boat-load of interactive features. I think that would do it. Though, I'm not an expert. But Sabatier is, and a few of the features he mentioned were along those lines. Things like: polls, live coverage, extensive menu bars and content from stars, writers, and editors. Actually, I think I was pretty close. Maybe WAN-IFRA will invite me next year. Hey, maybe I'll be able to meet Tiger Woods-I wonder what he's up to these days.