Web Report: Online Sports
The BBC this week unveiled its new sports website (news.bbc.co.uk/sport) bringing up-to-date news and features from all its sports coverage into a interactive portal. Its launch coincided with a new report which finds sports websites are top scorers amongst online revenue earners, and predicts a massive growth during the next few years.
Ad revenue is expected to top $6bn by 2005 as broadcasters and businesses alike tap into the global online audience. The report, from Screen Digest, suggests that sport on the internet is showing signs of a symbiosis with the growth of sports on television. Recent forays into internet sports rights by major broadcasters in the UK have mirrored the acquisition of television rights, with BSkyB so far leading the way.
The satellite broadcaster recently bought the Sports Internet Group, owner of Planetfootball.com, one of the most visited football sites on the web, with 19m page impressions a month at the last count (see BSkyB Signs Sports Internet Deal As Digital Expansion Takes Its Toll). It also owns a stake in sportal.com (see Sky Furthers Net Investments) and is converging its online and broadcast interests (see Sky Launches New Sports News Service).
As the Premier League prepares to hand out net rights to its matches, broadcasters have been beefing up their football web presence (see Premier League Internet Broadcast Rights Attract Multiple Bids). The acquisition of stakes in clubs allows control over the internet output of a team. Thus NTL has recently been on the acquisitional rampage buying stakes in Premier League football clubs and purchasing the net rights for the Football League (see NTL Bags Football League Net Rights) .
The latest research shows that the web is a perfect medium for the average sports fan, who is passionate about one team and sport as well as interested in big events and other sports to a lesser degree. Most sports portals are organised with this in mind, with channels for different sports, as well as a focus on the top events. Users have the choice to drill deeply into the sport of their choice as well as getting a comprehensive overview of the others.
It is this which is providing the “stickiness” of sports websites. Users are attracted to the depth of coverage they can find on the internet with sites dedicated to their club or team, as well as the ability to check up-to-date news on the big tournament. Latest figures show that sports website users stay an average of 3.1 times longer each time they visit a site and return 3 times more than other users.
As the net as a medium increases in growth both at home and in the workplace it becomes the ideal place to follow sporting events and its ease and flexibility of the medium allows it to attract a global audience at any time of the day. For big sporting events websites record huge numbers of users. Traffic to the official Wimbledon site is likely to grow by up to 700% during this seasons matches. Last year the site recorded 900m hits, 71m page impressions and 8.7m visits in 14 days. The Euro 2000 website is expected to have taken over 150m hits a day during the tournament.
The main audience for these sites is a male one: a US-based survey in 1998 found just 12% of all adults using the net to follow sports; this number doubled, however, when confined to just 18-34 year old men.