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March sports traffic online: madness

By GREG AUMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published March 23, 2001

The Academy Awards aren't until Sunday night, but it's easy to figure out the big picture the major sports sites have been promoting this week: Traffic.

No disrespect to Steven Soderbergh or anyone else at oscars.com, but the buzz this week has been about the hordes of people flocking online for various sporting reasons. And like Sunday's big event, it's not always clear who the big winners are:

Sportsline.com, which has been promoted heavily by CBS during its NCAA basketball coverage, reported major increases in tournament-related traffic.

In the first two days of the tournament, Sportsline registered 141-million page views, more than doubling last year's two-day opening traffic. One reason might come from Keynote Systems, a Web measurement company, which reported that Sportsline's "March Mayhem" main page downloaded in 1.49 seconds, as compared with 7.3 seconds for ESPN and 8.14 seconds for the tournament's official site, finalfour.net.

Another advantage, according to Keynote, was reliability. Traffic overwhelmed ESPN.com and finalfour.net during the opening day's afternoon games, making the sites inaccessible. Keynote assessed Sportsline's "connection rate" at 99 percent or better, while putting ESPN at 49.7 percent.

Sportsline also has led the way in its free online tournament contest, which topped 1-million entries. ESPN reported 830,000 entries and sandbox.com, which boasted Bob Knight among its pickers, had 739,281 in its pool. For the record, Knight has nine of 16 teams still alive, with two of his Final Four teams (Stanford and Kansas) still in the mix.

CNNSI.com's family of sites, which include NASCAR.com, golfonline.com and siforkids.com, leapt ahead of the ESPN family as the No. 1 sports entity in February traffic numbers released by Media Metrix.

CNNSI's group had better than 1.5-million more unique visitors than ESPN, and a few things can be credited for a 126 percent increase from CNNSI's January numbers: the start of NASCAR season and interest surrounding Dale Earnhardt's death at NASCAR.com, now produced by Turner Sports; and last month's launch of the online complement to Sports Illustrated's annual swimsuit issue, which boasts more than 100 Web-exclusive images. Swimsuit gawkers helped CNNSI.com outgain Sportsline's sites by about 400,000 visitors in February.

ESPN.com, meanwhile, was able to spin the same numbers another way, explaining that it "continues to widen its lead over its competitors." ESPN.com drew 6.1-million unique users in February, a 29 percent increase from last year and 2-million more than CNNSI.com.

ESPN also touted its site's stickiness, which sounds awkward but is actually an industry term that refers to how long visitors stay at a site once they're there. Visitors to ESPN.com spent 40.7 minutes per month, well ahead of Sportsline (23.5 minutes) and CNNSI (17.4).

TID-BYTES: Despite sagging ratings everywhere else, XFL traffic has been steady at MSNBC.com at about 200,000 visitors a week, according to the site. ... Confidence boost for the Rays' Paul Wilson, who has been limited by injuries to one win in the past four seasons: He's second with 20 percent, behind only Albie Lopez, in a poll at devilrays.com asking who will lead the Rays in victories this season. ... During The Players Championship in Ponte Vedra Beach, PGAtour.com is offering "Live@17," which has a live view of the island green on the 17th hole at TPC at Sawgrass. If you have trouble getting there on the first try, don't worry. You're not the only one.

-- If you have a question or comment about the Internet or a site to suggest, send an e-mail to staff writer Greg Auman at aumanac1@aol.com.

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