For athletes, the days of mynamehere.com generating millions in sponsorship revenue are over — at least for now.
The reason: Only the top few players in each sport can draw enough fans to a Web site to justify a huge rights payment on the promise that advertisers would pay for banner ads to reach those fans.
Broadband Sports, which created athletesdirect.com, found out the hard way, paying millions in fees to dozens of athletes only to find that fan and advertiser interest was minimal. Broadband also found that the player "brand" it had acquired was appearing on the Web sites of the athlete's other sponsors.
Today, with only the Tiger Woodses and Anna Kournikovas of the sports world able to sell an Internet deal, some players — on the advice of their agents — are retaining their Internet rights with the hope of a bigger payoff in the future.
The idea: to leverage interest in the athlete, as measured by traffic to the Web site. Those fans' names and other information about them, which would be valuable to potential sponsors, could then be used to negotiate bigger endorsement deals.
"It can add incremental value to the whole sports marketing program [that] agents are providing their client," said Todd McCormack, CEO of TWI Interactive, the Internet arm of IMG, which produces tigerwoods.com. "It's an enabling tool."
Many see the philosophy as a model for the future, and not just for elite athletes.
"There's some value in it for everyone," said Gregg Hamburger, director of advanced media and emerging technologies for The Marketing Arm. "The key is that the level of interest offset the cost of producing the site."
IMG, which represents Woods, could have sold his Internet rights to a new media company. Kournikova's Web site, which is produced by Lycos as part of a larger endorsement deal, is the most-trafficked athlete site even though the tennis player has yet to win a pro tournament.
The rights for Woods, who has won six major golf titles, might have brought millions. Instead, IMG, through TWI Interactive, chose to build a comprehensive Web site that would be the bible on Woods' life and career.
Content is paramount, McCormack said. In the past, athletes would receive their rights payment and have no incentive to build out the Web site by making themselves available for chats or other events, he said.
Building an elaborate site costs money. McCormack would not say how much tigerwoods.com cost to build and host, but noted that it costs IMG considerably less because the company owns much of the necessary infrastructure and site management software, and it controls the athlete.
"You can have some presence for $10,000 to $20,000," McCormack said. "You could spend $2 million very easily. You scale the presence depending on the commercial opportunity."
If the model is to be the Internet wave of the future, sports agents will have to forgo the possibility of an immediate payoff in the form of rights fees for the prospect of greater riches in the general marketplace.
They also will have to buy into the prospect of spending more rather than less to create a Web site that generates fan interest, said Bob McKamey, whose company, UncommonThinking.com, specializes in athlete sites.
He said it would be easier for agencies like IMG that can do it in-house for lesser-known athletes without shelling out a lot of money. For others, an "ego check" is in order.
"They really have to ask themselves what the demand is for that player's Web site," McKamey said.