Steve, in Wednesday's ISR you broke out the top 3 ISDEX gainers for 1999. #4 was Sportsline, which is enjoying continued strength as we hit March Madness. In the past many analysts have criticized SPLN for it's reliance on single short-term events like this tournament. I'd like to get your feedback on a couple of sports-related trends I have identified that are long-term positives for SPLN that appear to be broader and more enduring than the once-a-year attention blitz that events such as the Super Bowl and March Madness bring. These are trend calls on why the reach and importance of sports online is only beginning to scratch the surface: 1) just as the Net makes distance irrelevant for everything else, so too is it making geography less relevant for sports. Guess who the second most recognized American in China is? Michael Jordan. Thomas Edison is #1. Eventually that's going to translate into another billion potential purchasers of Bulls jerseys from Sporstline's SportsStore. And that's just one example. 2) the dramatic growth of women's sports highlights another very important trend; as the lines between sports fans and sports participants becomes blurred, and as new sports outside the traditional realm of professional leagues gain in commercial prospect from this blurring of the lines, women and non-Joe-Sixpack sports fans will become a larger and more important audience; Sportsline will figure this out and ramp up its coverage to create and serve these interest communities online, and this reach will be ADDITIVE-- Sports coverage limited to talking about the NBA, NFL, etc. is limited to a large but finite demographic audience, but when you add sports like running and snowboarding as legitimate newsworthy and commerical entities, you GROW the audience that can be reached by sports content and services online-- you are NOT cannibalizing your core audience of Joe Sixpacks. The community building power of these new sports and new demographic audiences is immense; this is why visionary companies like CMGI are investing in new startups like Asimba.com, which is building a training and fitness vertical portal / community. Fantasy sports are going to act in similar ways for Joe Sixpacks, creating new affinity groups and allegiances outside the bounds of traditional geographic loyalties and providing new bases for building sports-related communities online. We are only beginning to scratch the surface.
Cheers,
Ajunkh |
