USA

Citation

(2004), "USA", The Electronic Library, Vol. 22 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/el.2004.26322fab.005

USA

USA

Service and exclusives will grow e-mail opt-in

Research from Forrester suggests that technologies to validate e-mail and impose charges on sente-mails will help reduce the spam problem over the next few years. However, these measures will take time to have an effect – and they do not solve today’s problem that consumers are becoming increasingly distrustful of e-mail as a marketing medium. To encourage users to sign up for e-mail communications, companies must push e-mail as a channel for service instead of just sales, and focus on exclusive content and finely targeted marketing to revive consumer trust.

Online fantasy sports

According to research from comScore Media Metrix, 7 million Americans have visited the fantasy sports sections of Yahoo! Sports, Sportsline and ESPN. These users viewed an average of more than 200 pages of fantasy sports content per month. The analysis was conducted using comScore’s newly launched MediaBuilder tool, which provides customizable page- and channel-level detail for web site audiences and usage behaviour.

“Fantasy sports have become an integral component of sports publishers’ strategy for good reason”, said Peter Daboll, president and CEO of comScore Media Metrix. “Aside from the revenue generated from selling advanced functionality, fantasy content draws large numbers of loyal and highly engaged visitors”.

The analysis of online fantasy sports usage found that an average of 4.7 million Americans per month visited fantasy content at the three major providers, Yahoo! Sports, Sportsline and ESPN, between October and May. On average, these users spent 93 minutes viewing 219 pages of fantasy sports content in a given month.

The extent to which fantasy sports can be an effective means of attracting loyal and heavy site users is particularly apparent when fantasy visitors’ usage behaviour is compared to that of general sports category visitors. For example, the average visitor to the sports category viewed 107 pages per month between October and May – less than half of the average number of pages viewed by fantasy users during the same period. Fantasy users also spend more time viewing fantasy-related content than the average sports category visitor spends viewing sports content of any kind. Specifically, visitors spent an average of 93 minutes viewing fantasy content during the analysis period, compared to 71 minutes spent by the average Sports category visitor viewing all content.

Football fans are clearly the most significant contributors to fantasy sports traffic. In October, 81 percent of all fantasy visitors, or more than 6.0 million people, viewed football content – significantly more than the 3.1 million people who visited fantasy baseball content in April.

The research found that, on average, fantasy sports content at Yahoo! Sports draws three times the monthly audience of its nearest competitor. An average of more than 3.1 million users per month visited Yahoo! Sports fantasy content during the analysis period, compared to 950,000 visitors to ESPN and 930,000 visitors to Sportsline.

A demographic analysis confirmed what many would have expected: fantasy sports content is particularly attractive to younger males. Approximately 75 percent of all visitors to fantasy content are male, while more than a third of all fantasy visitors are between the ages of 25 and 34. Taken together, 25 to 34-year-old males are 170 percent more likely to visit fantasy content than the average Internet user. Fantasy visitors are also much more likely to have household incomes of $100,000 or more, live in single-person households and have a higher level of education.

“While it comes as little surprise to us that fantasy sports content is particularly attractive with younger males, these numbers are excellent news for publishers of this content”, continued Mr. Daboll. “There’s no doubt that fantasy content is disproportionately popular with many of the most highly sought-after demographic segments, including younger, more educated and more affluent consumers”.

comScore also found that the average fantasy sports user is 26 percent more likely to have a broadband connection than is the average at-home internet user. More than 53 percent of at-home visitors to fantasy content access the web through a broadband connection, compared to approximately 40 percent of total US at-home users. Since most participants visit fantasy content on a frequent basis, the “always on” connection provided by broadband access is likely a key factor in the disproportionate usage by this segment.