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Earlier this week, I was honored to be a Featured Speaker at the Sports Business Journal's Media & Technology Conference. It was about everything that it was supposed to be -- we had a great forum and the opportunity to connect with a few hundred of current and future leaders in the business of sports. I also was offered a $1,600 ticket to see Springsteen at the Beacon, but that's another story.
On Day 1 of the conference, I was the third of four featured speakers -- and asked to follow Bill Simmons aka to most as @sportsguy33. When we had the chance to say hello before his talk, I mentioned that I have the toughest job in the house -- having to follow him. Truthfully, it ended up working out perfectly. While Bill was interviewed by SBJ Executive Editor Abe Madkour he talked a lot about how his life is different today, as the face, Executive Editor and writer for one of the most watched properties on the Internet, Grantland. He offered some great insights from his life in the start-up environment, the importance of UX testing, and his patented two-cents on topics from the NBA (Stern should go) to the Patriots (Belichick should go) to Major League Baseball (less and less relevant to Americans under 30). What he didn't do as much of as I would have hoped was to talk about the Future.
While Simmons was once the future of sports journalism -- the talented, opinionated fan from Boston who couldn't crack traditional media, so instead chartered his own course and is now arguable the most popular voice on sports in America. Certainly the most popular voice for sports' largest and most important demographic group -- those under 34 years old. What I wanted to hear was a little more about was the effects of the industry he spawned -- who's the next Sports Guy? What's the next business model? Who will Pats and Jets fans get analysis from in 5 or 10 years? From the Boston Globe, Daily News or a group of bloggers sponsored by Subway or Verizon on their own channel?
To try to answer some of those questions and peak into the future as well as what's most relevant today, we conducted our ORBIT™ analysis of the 50 most influential social sites among the NFL and the MLB (to be released later) for the month of October. Though few were surprised that ESPN (w/ an ORBIT Score™ of 9.05) was #1 -- Twitter's very strong #2 showing at 8.80 raised a few eyebrows. The rest of the Top 5 were the big, traditional sites such as CBS, FOX and USA Today. The #1 site in the blog and community category was Bleacher Report (6.65) followed by the surprisingly strong Huffington Post (5.89) and Fan Nation (5.67). Our Top 50 sites with map and explanation can be downloaded here.
It will be interesting to watch this list and space over the next few years as we discover answer to questions like:
- Will Yahoo improve their ORBIT scores by allowing their top bloggers to engage with their audience more and allow comments?
- Will blogs continue to produce stars like Bill Simmons and Bleacher Report's NFL stud, @nfldraftscout Matt Miller? With more than 350 articles, 5.3 million page views and more than 13,000 fan comments, Matt Miller is quickly becoming one of the better respected NFL analysts in America (and also the most famous alumnus ever from Missouri Southern State).
- What role with advertising and sponsors play in the development of the new sports media?
- What effect will non-sports oriented sites -- like IGN Boards and Huffington Post -- have on NFL audiences in the future?
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