NewsLine Column: Survival Of The Fittest
The World Cup was heralded as a triumph for the internet with many websites recording their highest ever traffic figures. However, not everyone was in a position to take advantage of the festival of football. Simon Ward of MediaTel Insight sorts the winners from the losers.
With the majority of sports fans suffering withdrawal symptoms in the awkward hiatus between Wimbledon and the Commonwealth Games, this seems like a opportune moment to reflect on the impact of the web this momentous summer.
Figures alone would appear to show that sports sites have never been more popular. The first oriental World Cup forced every addict, without the most sympathetic boss, to rely on the internet for their daily fix of football. On the eve of the final, Nielsen/NetRatings revealed that over half a million Britons had visited the official FIFA World Cup website since the start of May. Eurosport, which achieved record-breaking viewing figures in June, announced that its site received 86 million page impressions during the tournament.
However, the old adage about lies, damned lies and football statistics would appear to ring true. The demise of ITV Digital and the ongoing tribulations of TEAMtalk 252 demonstrate that there is only so much room in the sporting marketplace and the web has seen its fair share of fallers in recent times.
Sportal, which provided the Euro 2000 website and had been valued at £270 million, was eventually sold for a mere £1 to UKBetting. The online bookmaker also picked up the PA/Trinity Mirror site SportingLife for a negligible fee.
The most high profile casualty this year has been Sports.com, the pan-European site, which announced at the start of the World Cup that it was going into administration. The company has since been broken up and its valuable domain has been acquired by Sportingbet.
The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that regardless of content and popularity, standalone sites have lost ground during the advertising slowdown. Rivals.net was the first sports site to be audited by ABCe and Football365 is widely respected for its irreverence and the input of fans. However, despite the fact that they appeal to a young, male, upmarket audience, the two sites were forced to merge resources last December in a cost cutting measure.
Many web companies are fighting a losing battle against the likes of the BBC and the Guardian, which are strong brands and have every opportunity to promote their online resources. Individual clubs have also cottoned on to the marketing potential of the internet and improved their sites accordingly.
The most effective independent sites have tended to be those which offer lively articles and do not rely on a single source of income. Gambling has been one of the success stories of the internet and many websites have joined forces with online bookies to offer betting facilities to their users. Revenues from advertising and merchandising are also set to increase.
While UK web users may no longer be bowled over by the wide choice of commercial sporting sites, the rise in quality is more than apparent and the survivors of the dotcom fallout will look to build on the success of the Korea-Japan experience.
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