SI’s Journalism Savvy Tough To Translate To Web Site Success

SI.com Averaging About 7 Million Unique Visitors Each Month

SI.com “faces a host of obstacles,” including a “limited portal hook-up (it has relationships with Yahoo and AOL); no television affiliation and a late-to-the-party fantasy sports connection,” according to Jon Friedman of MARKETWATCH.com in his series on sports Web sites. SI.com has about 7 million unique visitors each month, an increase of 10% from a year earlier, but ESPN.com posted 20.4 million unique visitors in September. February’s swimsuit issue drew 8.8 million unique visitors to SI.com, a 20% jump from ‘05, and more than 324,000 page views, up nearly 30% from February ’05. Of the 24% revenue growth the swimsuit franchise has had since ’03, “96% of it comes from SI.com and SI Digital sales,” including iTunes Video, calendars, mobile wallpapers and custom posters. SI execs “contest the view that their company has a reputation for appealing to older fans, not the young ones that Madison Avenue craves.” Friedman wrote SI’s “biggest strengths can almost look like weaknesses. For example, the memorable profiles by Gary Smith ... don’t translate easily into a medium where the fans mostly want to know whether their favorite teams won and how their fantasy-league players performed.” Also, the magazine’s photography “can get lost on a Web page.” But this NFL season, mySI.com was launched, which allows readers to get “all of their information from across the media — not just from SI” –- about their favorite NFL team.

EYE ON ESPN: SI Group Editor Terry McDonell said of ESPN, “They’re a TV network. We’re playing in a completely different league. We’ve always been about more than the score. We’re more nuanced than other Web sites.” SI.com Managing Editor Paul Fichtenbaum added that “everything written for SI.com is free, while ESPN.com readers must pay for inside information” (MARKETWATCH.com, 11/8).