The Falcons and Broncos were Super Bowl participants
who set up their online stores "very differently," yet "the
end result was the same: a successful, profitable season,
both on and off the field," as both teams worked with
Yahoo!Store, according to Debra Aho Williamson of AD AGE.
The Falcons enlisted Yahoo!Store during the '97-98 season to
assist with selling team merchandise. The site sold "twice
as much merchandise online" in four months of '98 as it
totaled all of the '97-98 season. Falcons Senior Accountant
Greg Beadles said that the team "paid nothing for their
store" and added that it was "very" profitable. The Broncos
contracted with ProTeam.com, which struck an alliance last
November with Yahoo!. ProTeam.com anchored its Broncos
store on Yahoo!Store, and by the start of the Super Bowl,
the Broncos store was receiving "more than 4,000 visits per
day" and had generated "nearly $350,000 in online orders."
Broncos Marketing Services Specialist Steve Harbula said
that the team wasn't "interested in the upfront investment
it would have taken" to staff their own online store.
Yahoo! charges "no setup fee" and "as little as" $100 per
month to host a 50-item store. The Broncos "paid nothing"
to ProTeam.com and earned a 15% royalty on net sales from
the online store, which translated into "a payout of exactly
$13,260.60 on net sales of more than $88,000" for the fourth
quarter (AD AGE, 3/15 issue).
