Advertising tells the tale on sports web sites

RIO RANCHO, NM – Prohockeynews.com has begun to focus on the business of the industry of hockey.   This section entitled, The Business, is intended to highlight issues, trends, and problems in the business of professional hockey.   In a recent article from eMarketer (www.emarketer.com) Paul Verna

covers the spectrum of advertising as it relates to sports-related web sites.   For professional hockey fans, the state of the sport and its ability to generate revenue is cause for relief and still some concern.   In his report on advertising in sports-related web sites Verna writes of the NHL:   NHL One of the biggest challenges the NHL faces is that its fans are notoriously tribal.   They follow their favored teams passionately but are not interested in what is going on elsewhere in the league.   To that end, the NHL is streaming live games and leveraging exclusive digital content across multiple platforms in an effort to further engage its fan base.   The NHL was the first sports league to partner with YouTube and has streamed more than 20 million clips from its YouTube page.   The league has also partnered with Hulu, Joost, MySpace, iTunes and Amazon Unbox. Beyond these alliances, the NHL has actively encouraged its fans to link or embed NHL streaming video.   NHL senior executive vice president of business and media John Collins told eMarketer that these tactics are “strategic components in a laser-focused plan to activate the most passionate, attractive demographic in all of sports—and get them to invest more time, emotion and money with the NHL.”   According to NHL statistics, the league has 53 million fans in North America. During the past season, 22 million people attended an NHL game and 253 million watched a local or national NHL broadcast. In addition, 12 million visited NHL.com in April 2008. The league’s research shows that its fans tend to be younger, more educated, more affluent and more tech-savvy than fans of other sports.   The NHL’s live-streaming package, Center Ice Online, was launched in March 2007. It covers virtually the entire season for an annual subscription of $150.       Revenue figures were not available, but an NHL spokesperson noted that total revenues for all offline and online merchandising, licensing and corporate marketing increased 40% in the 2007 to 2008 season over the previous season.   The spokesperson added that NHL.com’s revenue mix includes advertising, e-commerce and subscriptions.     Verna’s observation that hockey fans are “tribal” has been true for years.   Hockey fans are rabidly loyal to their favorite club or player, and when that club is eliminated from postseason contention or the playoffs, their interest in the sport wanes and dissipates to near nil.   That fact has had a great effect on prohockeynews.com and prior traditional and online hockey publications.     Indeed, early in the 2007-08 Central Hockey League campaign, these pages lamented the two-tiered characteristic of that league.   With mere weeks gone in the season nearly half of the clubs were effectively eliminated from postseason competition.   That meant nearly half of news readership would be disenfranchised from not only their club, but the entire league.   Prohockeynews.com has long recognized the need to engage its readers and encourage them to drill down into other pages that they might not otherwise consider important.   The Dead Pool Report has been a keycomponent of that effort.   Equally important has been the expansion of our coverage beyond the borders of North America.   Since the inception of our coverage of professional hockey in the United Kingdom and Europe, we have seen our readership go “off the reservation” to follow their favorite players.   With the increased value of the Euro over the US dollar, North American players are taking themselves and their families for an overseas adventure in the UK and Europe.   The UK and European leagues are financially attractive alternatives and the level of play is challenging while the fan support may well be more rabid than that seen in North America.   Encouraging readers to drill down deeper into a sports web site (or any web site) is the key to revenue generation.   How many ads can be placed in front of the eyeballs of each visitor?   Of particular interest in Verna’s article, was the identification of Yahoo! Sports as the number one site for sports news with ESPN.com a close second.   However, of concern to any sports fan (and hockey fanspecifically) is where sports ranks in Internet usage.   Turning to the Internet for sports information is only the 6^th most popular task for which the Internet is used.   Hockey’s future may well rest with the new media and the broadcast outlets provided online.   The NHL Network’s Center Ice Package delivered online through streaming video appeals to the tech-savvy fan and Verna’s research and report demonstrate that the typical NHL fan is indeed more technology-savvy than other sports fans.   Prohockeynews.com released PHN 4.0 in June 2008 and will officially launch the new site on September 1.   With a closer relationship with Intotheboards.net, prohockeynews.com is committed to delivering up-to-date news and information on professional hockey worldwide.     Prohockeynes.com thanks eMarketer and author Paul Verna and managing editor Kris Oser for permission to reprint portions of Mr. Verna’s article.   The original appeared in July 2008 at www.emarketer.com.   All images are courtesy of eMarketer. Contact the author at lou.lafrado@prohockeynews.com.