Hi everybody. I'm back in SPLN after several months away. I rode it from $18 back in December to the $50s in March, but got out at that time due to seasonal factors (see my post #615, techstocks.com. I began to get back in last week at $19 due to a new round of positive seasonal factors and the lagging price relative to the recovery in its peers, and I really loaded up at $21 on Monday when I saw the press release. Sportsline beating ESPN's reach in July is a major move. Unless Media Metrix did something funky, increasing reach by 13% in a weak month for sports is really significant. Majorleaguebaseball.com wasn't even counted, and that SPLN site is going to going to rocket from here on out as we enter the pennant race this fall for baseball and as the home run race catches fire. It's Sosa and McGwire again, and ahead of last year's pace: Sosa with 51, McGwire with 50. Last year at this time? McGwire with 50, Sosa with 46. Football preseason is on as well, with the real season coming up soon. Fall is also generally a great time for sports ratings when everyone comes back from the beach. Also Sportsline hadn't bounced until this week the way the top-tier Internet names have, and was slow to react even to this press release on Monday. This followed a typical SPLN pattern of having overnight delayed reactions to news, and provided a heckuva buying opportunity on Monday post press-release. It has begun to move now, and IMO is headed back to $50. Do note though that in spite of SPLN's claim (an accurate one) that they beat out ESPN in July, ESPN may claim other numbers from their entire network of sites run by ESPN Internet Ventures (EIV). SPLN also would gain reach by counting it's whole network (eg: majorleaguebaseball.com), but my sense is that it would benefit ESPN more than SPLN to use "network" numbers... Note in particular this quote from an ESPN press release regarding its ESPN Internet Ventures Group (EIV): "EIV's combined home/work reach is greater than SportsLine USA, CNNSI.com and Fox Sports Online's combined (6.1 million to 6.0 million) (June Media Metrix)" from this press release: biz.yahoo.com.
Cheers all,
Andrew |
