Feature: Sports Websites
Reaching a young male audience is not always an easy task for advertisers, especially now that lads mag fever is in decline. Sports websites, whose audience, according to NetValue, is made up of around 70% male visitors, could therefore be an attractive option for advertisers seeking male eyeballs, with major player rivals.net, for example, turning in an ABCe audited monthly unique visitor tally of 870,325.
What’s more, these sites can deliver much-valued young audiences. Figures from NetValue suggest that 17.9% of visitors to sports websites (including both general and single sport sites) are in the 18-24 year old age bracket, and that visitors from this age group spend more time on the sites and display more pages. In terms of income, the larger proportion of sports website visitors tend to be in the low and middle income brackets, reflecting the fact that around a quarter of visitors are students and that manual workers and white collar workers each represent around 12% of visitors.
Advertisers attracted to these sites at present tend to be fairly predictable, given the male-dominated audience. Automotive advertising is prominent, as are gambling websites, and Microsoft’s new games console, X-box, is said to be planning a campaign on at least one UK online sports property.
This year’s big story for online sports properties has been consolidation. Seen by many as inevitable in an overcrowded, under-differentiated market, the last few months has seen sportal.com merged into sportinglife.com as both companies were bought by UKBetting, while Chrysalis-owned rivals.net has joined with the 365 Corps web properties to form Newco.
These moves in the face of a shrinking pool of ad revenue suggest a future dominated by a few large multisports sites, including these newly combined properties and the news-focussed sports.com. Outside of this the major players are likely to be those that focus on one sport in particular, such as Cricinfo, the world’s largest single sports site, and sites covering major sports such as football and Formula 1.
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