ESPN SportsZone is examined in an extensive feature by
David Diamond in the current issue of WIRED under the
header, "In the Zone." Diamond: "On a good day -- say, a
busy college football weekend or anytime during the NCAA
Final Four -- with hits pouring in by the millions,
SportsZone's not just the world's busiest sports Web site.
It's the Net's busiest destination, period, trashing all but
the two or three top search engines and navigation sites."
SportsZone is "a screaming success, one of the few nonsex
sites with users rabid enough to actually pay hard cash ...
to log on to SportsZone Premium, a grab bag of special
features. And for the technojocks who make it happen, it's
a 24-7 world: tough athletic competition one minute, nail-
biting deadline sports coverage and mind-scrambling
technology immersion the next -- Web publishing as a contact
sport." Starwave Chair & CEO Mike Slade: "We tend to hire a
type. A lot of people come here from the work-really-hard-
then-burn-it-off school" (WIRED, 6/97 issue).
PROVIDING FANS A VOICE: Diamond notes that "no one at
SportsZone is shy about the site's underlying ambition: to
reinvent sports coverage." Publisher Geoff Reiss: "Can we
give each fan a distinct voice? No, that's not realistic.
But can we make it a pretty high priority to create
opportunities for fans to be looped in? Yes" (WIRED, 6/97).
