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| Timberwolves.com will show a Flash-enhanced ad as the page loads. |
The Minnesota Timberwolves this week plan to launch a multimedia-friendly team Web site that club executives say already has paid for itself in new sponsorships.
The re-launch, scheduled for Tuesday, signals an effort by the Timberwolves to transform a relatively staid site that offered little more than a value-add for sponsors into a dynamic, video- and image-driven moneymaker, according to Ted Johnson, the team's director of communications.
"That's an important objective of ours, to take a look at the Internet as another revenue generator for the team," Johnson said.
Using Flash technology, timberwolves.com will feature a space devoted to video and photos that takes up one-third of the page. Financial-services company MyFICO already has signed a one-year sponsorship deal with the team that allows the company to run a Flash-enhanced ad during the five to eight seconds it takes the home page to load, Johnson said.
Johnson would not disclose financial terms of the deal but did say the sponsorship more than covered the cost to develop the new site. In addition, based on the early sponsorship success of the new timberwolves.com, the team also plans to re-launch the official site of the WNBA Minnesota Lynx.
The Timberwolves will continue to rely heavily on the NBA for content for their new site, which still will follow the general framework and organization featured on nba.com and the league's other team sites, Johnson said.
Other NBA teams that have re-launched their sites since the start of the season include the New York Knicks, Houston Rockets, Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns and Seattle SuperSonics.
