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NEWSFLASH
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From:Hollywood, CA
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posted March 13, 2007 12:21 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for NEWSFLASH   Click Here to Email NEWSFLASH     Edit/Delete Message
Sports Illustrated and NBC To Share Content


Sports Illustrated and NBC Sports have agreed to share each other's video, photos, reports, and feature articles on their respective websites -- that is, video from NBC's television coverage will be accessible on Sports Illustrated's SI.com website; photos and articles in the magazine will be linked to NBCSports.com. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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NEWSFLASH
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From:Hollywood, CA
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posted March 21, 2007 02:03 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for NEWSFLASH   Click Here to Email NEWSFLASH     Edit/Delete Message
CBS Acquires Online High-School Sports Network


The websites of CBS-owned stations and affiliates are expected to begin offering coverage of high-school sports following the network's acquisition Tuesday of MaxPreps, an online high-school sports network. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Brian Bedol, president and CEO of CBS-owned College Sports Television (CSTV), said in a statement that the deal "will help make CBS's local television stations and websites the 'go-to' place for local sports content in communities across the country."

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fred
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From:Redmond, WA
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posted March 23, 2008 10:36 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for fred   Click Here to Email fred     Edit/Delete Message
The NBA's Top Gossips
How Three Nobodies Built Basketball's
Most Powerful News Site -- From Spain
By RUSSELL ADAMS
March 21, 2008; Page W1

Madrid

General managers, agents, sportswriters and knowledgeable fans of the National Basketball Association log on every morning to Hoopshype.com1 for the latest in news and gossip.

The pro basketball Web site has influenced player moves, stoked rivalries and now attracts more than a half-million unique visitors a month after starting from scratch in 2002. NBA coaches read it to check in on their job status, and rumors posted there have put trades in motion. "It's required reading for every member of my staff," says Bill Duffy, an NBA agent in Walnut Creek, Calif.

It's also been a mystery. For all its popularity, few had any idea who was behind it.
[photo]
The Three Amigos: (from left) Jorge Sierra, Angel Marin and Raúl Barrigón of Hoopshype.com

After six years of anonymity, the architects of Hoopshype.com have come forward, and they turn out to be a surprising squad: three 29-year-old men working from their apartments in Spain. Collectively, they've been to two NBA games, although they watch on TV. One of them doesn't even like the sport.

How three Spaniards became the town criers of a major North American sports league is another reminder of how the Internet is helping displace traditional reporting with specialized sites and forums that feature a mix of rumors, news and opinion. "I like the fact that what I do has an impact on the NBA outside of my country," says Hoopshype founder Jorge Sierra.

On a recent February afternoon, after the news broke that the Miami Heat planned to trade center Shaquille O'Neal to the Phoenix Suns, the bilingual Hoopshype team gathered in a small third-floor apartment in the Salamanca neighborhood of Madrid to work the story. Raúl Barrigón hunched over a computer in the smaller of the two bedrooms. He scoured the Web for tidbits, trying to make sense of the trade. "He still has to pass a physical, and that's a big 'if' because he's already messed up physically," said Mr. Barrigón.
[photo]
Shaquille O'Neal's recent trade to Phoenix doubled the site's traffic

In the sparsely furnished living room, Mr. Sierra and Angel Marin sat at opposite ends of a glass-top dining-room table, pecking away at laptops. Mr. Sierra obsessively dialed Danilo Gallinari, an Italian player expected to be a top pick in the NBA draft this June. An ESPN online reporter sent an email saying he needed to change a couple of details before Mr. Sierra could post a link to his story. Meantime, tens of thousands more visitors than usual swamped the Hoopshype site, seeking the latest on the Shaq trade. Mr. Sierra -- thin, with angular features and deep-set eyes -- rested his head in his left hand. He'd been up since 7 a.m., five hours earlier than usual. "It killed me," he said.

Mr. Sierra created Hoopshype.com six years ago in a bedroom of his parents' home in Valladolid, a town 125 miles northwest of Madrid. The popularity of basketball began swelling here after Spain reached the finals in the 1984 Olympics. Basketball fever spread during the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, when a U.S. dream team of NBA stars transfixed the country. The growing interest in the game in the 1980s had spawned a number of Spanish-language basketball magazines, including Gigantes, where all three men worked as college students in 2000.

In 2001, Mr. Sierra took a job writing for a women's basketball Web site. He says he was shocked to discover that it was making money, so he bought a manual on how to create a Web site and launched Hoopshype.com. It began as a technical and financial disaster, crashing once a week and drawing no advertisers. Mr. Sierra eventually found a stable of U.S. writers to contribute articles at $25 a shot. He used his connections with European pro basketball teams to land interviews with players who were drawing attention from U.S. teams.
[photo]
Ana Nance/Redux Pictures
Left to right: Jorge Sierra, Raul Barrigon, Angel Marin

Even when he was running the site by himself, Mr. Sierra rarely rose before noon. He didn't have to. His time zone gave him a five-hour head start on his closest U.S. rivals. He used the time to scour the Web for the latest NBA news so that his summary was ready when U.S. agents and NBA executives start checking the site in the morning. "I think everybody reads it," says Lon Babby, a Washington-based agent who represents 19 NBA players.

The hub of the site is "Rumors," which are harvested from hundreds of sources, including U.S. and international newspapers, as well as other Web sites and bloggers. Hoopshype taps a lengthy source list of agents, players and executives to confirm stories and break news. In 2004, according to Mr. Sierra, they were the first to report the Lakers were trading Gary Payton to Boston.

What most distinguishes Hoopshype is the critical mass of movers and shakers who read it daily. Even when the rumors prove false, the site acts as a catalyst. One morning in October 2005, a Hoopshype item caught the eye of Larry Harris, the former general manager of the Milwaukee Bucks: A New York tabloid was reporting that the New Orleans Hornets wanted to trade Jamaal Magloire.

The story turned out to be wrong. But the rumor prompted Mr. Harris to call the Hornets to find out if they were willing to deal. Two days later, Mr. Magloire was on his way to Milwaukee. Mr. Harris says he routinely calls other general managers in the league based on tips from Hoopshype.
[photo]
A rumor on Hoopshype sparked a trade for Jamaal Magloire

"If anyone tells you they're not reading it, I'd have to say they're maybe trying to keep a lot of things close to the vest," Mr. Harris says.

Over lunch at an Asian fusion restaurant in downtown Madrid, Messrs. Sierra, Marin and Barrigón discuss the American sport that keeps them fed. Mr. Marin pulls out the laptop to check how much Internet traffic is being generated by the Shaq trade. He is the bookish, technical guru of Hoopshype and wears a black T-shirt that says, "I void warranties."

Mr. Marin confesses he attended his first NBA game last year in Los Angeles. "It was boring," he says. He points across the table at Mr. Sierra. "But it's one more game than he's been to."

The soft-spoken Mr. Sierra is embarrassed to admit he'd never attended an NBA game in the U.S. before he traveled to New Orleans last month for the All-Star game. Before that his only taste of the league had come from a few pre-season exhibitions played in Spain.

While Hoopshype's proprietors like to point out that Spain has become a major basketball hotbed ("It's not like we're in Uzbekistan," Mr. Barrigón says), they say they've been reluctant to make it widely known that the site is run an ocean away from the nearest NBA arena. "It's not something we're trying to hide, but it's not something we're trying to show, either," Mr. Sierra says.

Profits began dribbling in about a year after the launch. Two years later, Dime magazine, a basketball publication in the U.S., agreed to sell ads on Hoopshype for a split of the revenue. That arrangement yielded a deal with Nike in late 2004, providing Mr. Sierra with enough money to move out of his parents' house and into an apartment.
[Go to sports page]2 MORE

Read more3 sports news and analysis on WSJ.com's new Sports page4.

Last year, Fantasy Sports Ventures went looking for him. FSV, based in New York, is building a network of Web sites for advertisers that deliver readers bundled by sport and topic. The firm, which had been acquiring sports Web sites, wanted a basketball site with broad reach. When its representatives started asking NBA insiders to name the sport's most influential Web site, their answer -- more often than not -- was Hoopshype.com.

It took three months for FSV executives to track down Mr. Sierra and arrange a meeting. In December, they agreed to purchase Hoopshype for a price in the "low-seven figures," according to Chris Russo, the chief executive. Mr. Sierra received the lion's share of the money, but says he insisted on sharing the proceeds with Messrs. Barrigón and Marin, as well as retaining them as full-time employees. The three men continue to run the site.

It's 9 p.m. in Madrid. The tipoff of the day's first NBA game back in the States is still three hours away. Messrs. Sierra and Barrigón are riding the subway on a break for dinner and drinks. Their work days usually stretch into the middle of the night during NBA season, which runs from October to June. "One of us is always doing something related to Hoopshype until we go to bed," says Mr. Sierra.

As usual, they're talking hoops. Even in Spanish-inflected English it sounds like an episode of TNT's "Inside the NBA." Mr. Barrigón reminds Mr. Sierra that during the 1992 Olympics the NBA star and U.S. Dream Teamer Chris Mullin made 14 of 26 three-point shots. Shifting subjects, Mr. Sierra says former New York Knicks head coach Jeff Van Gundy hurt the team by making Latrell Sprewell play out of position.

They keep circling back to the news of the day, the departure of the superstar center, Mr. O'Neal, from the Miami Heat. For Phoenix, trading the younger, cheaper Shawn Marion for an aging star with two years remaining on his contract after this season "is pretty stupid," Mr. Sierra says.

As the subway nears its stop, Mr. Barrigón checks his watch. It's two o'clock in the afternoon in Phoenix. Mr. O'Neal will be touching down there shortly. They'd better hurry. Mr. O'Neal might be done with his physical before they get back to their computers.

Write to Russell Adams at russell.adams@wsj.com

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NEWSFLASH
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Posts: 7462
From:Hollywood, CA
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posted April 07, 2008 04:02 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for NEWSFLASH   Click Here to Email NEWSFLASH     Edit/Delete Message
Hockey Going Interactive

With ratings for National Hockey League games continuing to melt away, the league is snazzing up its website with a new video player that can play archived highlight clips going back three years. The clips can be retrieved by typing in either the name of the player or the date in a search box. The website coincides with the start of the Stanley Cup playoffs on Wednesday. The website PaidContent.com reported Sunday that numerous interactive features are being rolled out for the NHL website, including one that, by clicking "more" after watching a game's highlights, viewers can see a list of goals and click on any specific one. (They can then view a list of goals scored by the same player in other games.)

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NEWSFLASH
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posted May 05, 2008 05:56 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for NEWSFLASH   Click Here to Email NEWSFLASH     Edit/Delete Message
Sports Illustrated to Take Fantasy Game to Facebook
Sports Illustrated Group has reached an agreement with Citizen Sports Inc. to develop and promote sports-related Web content, including a fantasy-football game that will be played on the Facebook Inc. Web site. The move is, in part, an admission by the iconic sports brand, owned by the Time Inc. division of Time Warner Inc., that it needs to do more than draw traffic to its own Web site. It also needs to take its products to a site people already visit. As part of the agreement, closely held Citizen Sports, of San Francisco, will develop the software for the fantasy game. The Sports Illustrated sales force will sell advertising to accompany the game, and the magazine will make articles by its writers available to players. The game is expected to launch in July. In fantasy sports, people pick teams made up of real athletes. Players win or lose depending on how well the athletes they chose perform in different statistical categories. Ken Fuchs, vice president and general manager for SI Digital, Sports Illustrated's online operation, says that rather than competing head to head with other sports sites to attract visitors, he wants to take his content to the places where sports fans already are. "We want people to come to our site, obviously," Mr. Fuchs says. "But we recognize there's an opportunity to reach people where they interact." Facebook, a social-networking site that allows people to exchange messages and form groups around shared interests, had 35 million unique visitors in March, according to comScore Media Metrix. Sports Illustrated has struggled to adapt to the Internet age. Its Web site, SI.com, received 8.3 million unique visitors in March, according to Nielsen Online -- well behind competitors such as Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN.com and Yahoo Inc.'s sports site, which were visited by 19.8 million and 19.4 million people, respectively. Sports Illustrated also trails by a large margin ESPN.com, Yahoo, and CBS Corp.'s Sportsline.com in the number of people who play its fantasy-sports games. Fantasy sports "is a huge business for sports Web sites," says Clay Walker, founder of the Fantasy Sports Association, an industry group. More people play fantasy football than any other fantasy sport, he says. In 2007, 11.7 million fans played fantasy football, according to Nielsen Online, up 16% from 2006. The average participant spent almost two hours a month on fantasy Web sites -- about four times as long as the average visitor. The games are responsible for as much as 80% of the ad revenue on many large sports sites, Mr. Walker says. Facebook allows businesses to create games and other services within its site. The businesses keep revenue from ads they sell to accompany these services, a Facebook spokesman says. Facebook benefits by drawing more people to its site. Facebook has shown that it has the potential to disrupt the fantasy-sports industry, says Mr. Walker. In particular, he notes that a recent game on Facebook in which people picked the team they thought would win the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament was more popular than similar games on traditional sports Web sites. The partnership with Citizen Sports may help Sports Illustrated reach that audience. Citizen Sports Chief Executive Mike Kerns says that 4.5 million Facebook users already participate in fan communities that his company created for the site, giving it an immediate audience for the fantasy game. (WSJ)

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indiedan
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posted August 16, 2008 03:24 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for indiedan   Click Here to Email indiedan     Edit/Delete Message
Olympic Viewership On Web Remains Small, Study Finds

15 August 2008 10:36 AM, PDT

Although much has been made of the impressive number of viewers who are watching Olympic events on the Internet, an analysis of the numbers by Fox TV and reported today (Friday) by TV Week observes that television accounts for 99.7 percent of Olympics total viewing time, while the Internet accounts for the remaining 0.3 percent. "Bottom line? Broadcast rules," Fox said. The network noted that its analysis was based primarily on figures provided online by the website TVBytheNumbers.com. The figures would appear to conflict with those provided by NBC, which said Tuesday that 92 percent of the audience is watching the Olympics on TV and 8 percent on the Internet. TV Week explained the discrepancy by noting that viewers watch the Internet streams for far shorter periods than they watch the television broadcasts.

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N F S I 2
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posted August 25, 2008 10:49 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for N F S I 2   Click Here to Email N F S I 2     Edit/Delete Message
Online Coverage No Big Moneymaker For NBC

25 August 2008 10:36 AM, PDT

While NBC has said it raked in more than $1 billion in ad sales for the Olympic Games, only $5.75 million came from online ad revenue, according to eMarketer Inc. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that NBC had employed its NBCOlympics.com primarily as a "research laboratory" to get a handle on how consumers use the Internet. It said that most online users accessed the website to see events that they had missed on the air or to see a repeat. The Times article appeared critical of the network's decision to delay many of the events, saying that it "put the network at odds with the spirit of the Internet which rewards speed and rejects scarcity." On the other hand Yahoo! often put events on its websites before they appeared on NBC's telecasts. As a result, the newspaper observed, Yahoo! drew an average of 4.7 million unique visitors a day through Aug. 18 versus 4.3 million for NBC, according to Nielsen Media Research.

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fred
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posted December 16, 2008 09:11 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for fred   Click Here to Email fred     Edit/Delete Message
Traffic Flat, ESPN.com Gets Redesign (DIS)
Nicholas Carlson | December 16, 2008 12:00 PM

Don't look now, but ESPN.com is hurting for traffic.

It's basiclly flat, year-over-year. The site saw 22 million uniques in November 2007 and only 21 million in November 2008, according to ComScore.

According to Quantcast, visits are down too -- from 145 million per month a year ago, to 121 million now.

Worse, parent-company Disney (DIS) recently blamed soft ad sales in ESPN.com' sweet spot -- the young men's demo -- for slowed profit growth.

So here comes the redesign, reports the New York Times, which calls it "significant shift in strategy." The bulletpoints:

* ESPN is taking less-is-more approach, paring the 36 links at the top of the homepage down to 19, for example.
* Advertisers will get to choose from eight ad units instead of three, including a video ad slot intended for movie trailers.
* ESPN.com gets a better search engine. “Our old one, frankly, was just not very good,” says ESPN exec John Skipper.
* Expanded user customization

A redesign is a good idea, but Disney isn't going far enough. Disney should slap pre-rolls on all of its video content and distribute it through Hulu or a site like it. ESPN already wisely makes its clips available for embed, so why should users have to go to ESPN.com to find them in the first place?

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fred
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posted June 15, 2009 12:41 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for fred   Click Here to Email fred     Edit/Delete Message
NBC Tackles Football Website

15 June 2009 11:18 AM, PDT

Another popular website is being co-opted by Big Media. Profootballtalk.com, operated by West Virginia labor lawyer Mike Florio, is forming a partnership with NBC Sports, which is planning to make it a permanent feature on NBCSports.com. Asked by the Los Angeles Times about Florio's "unflinching approach" to football (among other things, he keeps a tally of player arrests), NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol, replied, "I can't think of another pro football website that has the unique following in such large numbers that Mike does. I'd be a fool if I tried to change that."

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indiedan
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posted July 13, 2010 08:50 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for indiedan   Click Here to Email indiedan     Edit/Delete Message
Turner Chases ESPN With New Web Game Face

By SHIRA OVIDE

Time Warner Inc.'s Turner cable-television networks have forked over billions of dollars to air big-time sporting events, but they haven't matched the stature of ESPN. Now Turner is roping a corporate sibling into the chase.

To beef up and better compete for digital advertising and buzz with ESPN, Turner's sports division is set to take control of the Web business of Sports Illustrated, owned by Time Warner's Time Inc. magazine unit. The partnership will combine Sports Illustrated's SI.com and Golf.com with a stable of websites managed by Turner Sports, such as NBA.com, Nascar.com and PGA.com.

Time Warner said it estimates the combined websites reach 40 million unique monthly visitors in the U.S. Yahoo Inc. was the most-popular online sports destination in May, with 35.9 million unique visitors, followed by Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN, with 25.4 million, according to comScore Inc.

Turner Sports will steer advertising sales, marketing and other digital business operations for Sports Illustrated, while Time Inc. will continue to control the business side of the weekly print magazine and journalism in the magazine and online. The new entity, expected to be announced Monday, will be called "Turner/SI Digital," and executives said Turner Sports eventually may be rebranded with the Sports Illustrated name.

Several rounds of talks about a Turner-SI partnership have been derailed in previous years, in part by Time Inc.'s worries it would lose clout if Sports Illustrated left the fold. According to people familiar with the matter, two factors sealed the deal this time: Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes's renewed push for cooperation among business units, and the need to pay off on the recent $10.8 billion deal for Turner to share TV broadcasts of the popular NCAA college-basketball tournament.

The Turner-SI combination aims to mend holes for each side. Turner Sports said it lacks a broad-interest sports website or a recognizable brand name, even though Turner networks such as TNT and TBS air major TV sports, including the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, professional golf and Nascar auto racing.

"We're actually stronger combining these assets than separate," said Turner Sports President David Levy.

For the magazine unit, Time Inc. executives say Sports Illustrated's website isn't popular enough to compete for some big marketers, and they can't afford the rights to the sports video that people increasingly expect online.

"We need scale," said Mark Ford, president of the Time Inc. news and sports group. "The competition is getting bigger, so we needed to move now," he said, citing among other rivals Comcast Corp.'s pending takeover of NBC Universal, which together would own a raft of TV-sports rights.

This deal also gives Time Inc. a sure profit stream at an uncertain time for print advertising. People familiar with the matter say as part of the deal, Turner agreed to guarantee $15 million to $20 million of annual net income to Time Inc. Mr. Ford said he also will look to collaborate within Time Warner for other brands he oversees, including Time and Fortune, as Mr. Bewkes pushes Time Inc. to further expand beyond print.

Time Inc. long has sought a bigger partner for Sports Illustrated, and has discussed teaming up with former Time Warner unit AOL Inc., as well as with Turner Sports several times as far back as five years ago, according to people familiar with the matter. Turner's CNN network and Time Inc. already jointly operate the profitable business-news website CNNMoney.com.

Prior Turner-SI talks fell short in part because Time Inc. balked at the possibility of shifting control of one of their key brands and editorial oversight, some of these people said. Some Time Inc. executives favored a combination with Turner Sports, and advocated for Turner to take control of all of Sports Illustrated, including the magazine. Such an arrangement wasn't considered at high levels within Time Inc., and Turner executives didn't want to control the magazine business operations, these people said.

The compromise of splitting control of the magazine and online business operations leaves some scratching their heads. "I believe leaving the magazine behind will ultimately be not ideal for the SI brand," said Mark Lazarus, a former Turner Entertainment Group president who led prior Sports Illustrated deal discussions. Mr. Lazarus now is president of CSE Inc., a sports-and-entertainment marketing company that has done work for ESPN and other sports networks.

Time Inc. and Turner said the deal enhances Sports Illustrated, including the magazine. Time Inc. said Sports Illustrated's business operations will gain revenue from being able to sell ads on Turner's websites, and the magazine journalists will gain a higher profile from appearances on Turner's sports broadcasts.

There are some complicated mechanics from splitting control of Sports Illustrated. For example, software applications for the iPhone and other mobile devices will be overseen by Turner if they are free to download, but apps that require a fee will be overseen by Time Inc.

In a company where failed promises of riches from corporate cooperation upended the $100 billion AOL-Time Warner merger, Mr. Bewkes recently has encouraged the company's divisions to work together and rely less on deals with outsiders, according to people familiar with Time Warner.

For example, when Turner's CNN passed on doing its yearly documentary feature to introduce the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, Mr. Bewkes pressed executives on why, according to people familiar with the matter. Instead, NBC Universal's CNBC channel produced a business documentary about the swimsuit issue.

In a statement, Mr. Bewkes said the Turner-SI deal "is yet another example of coordinated interaction within Time Warner aimed at extending the reach and monetization of our content."
—Sam Schechner contributed to this article.

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