SI Digital

It’s easy to focus on what SI.com doesn’t have compared with its competition — namely a TV network to promote its online offerings and provide proprietary video content, a steady stream of daily game highlights, a portal to bring in more casual fans, or monthly traffic that comes close to matching up with the likes of ESPN.com or Yahoo! Sports.

But thanks to an aggressive content-driven strategy that has removed much of Sports Illustrated’s image as a stodgy, dated operation, SI.com has successfully recalibrated itself to compete against its larger rivals.

Already well-established in coverage of the major American stick-and-ball properties, SI.com, under the leadership of SI Digital President Jeff Price, spent 2007 expanding its footprint into high school sports and social networking through equity deals in Takkle.com and FanNation.com, golf through the relaunch of 2006 acquisition Golf.com, and radio through a multiplatform pact with Dan Patrick led in part by the online simulcast of the popular radio show.

Those initiatives, as well as the expected record traffic and advertiser embrace for content related to the annual swimsuit issue, pushed SI Digital’s contribution to overall Sports Illustrated revenue to 15 percent, up from 3 percent in 2004.

Despite having one of the industry’s deepest brand equities through the Sports Illustrated name, SI Digital still blazed trails through the launch of mySI.com, an open-source platform that brings users their desired sports news, regardless of where it originally was published.

The concept, initially mocked in some corners, is now widely copied as many sites look to bring search-engine-type functionalities into their content pages. But arguably no top-tier sports site pushes the open-source envelope as aggressively as SI.com.

SI’s disdain for walled gardens was evident with the successful introduction of SI Vault, which offers fans free, unfettered access into the company’s more than five decades of content.

“Our strategy is to build SI Digital on the foundation of our award-winning journalists and photographers who deliver breaking news, an independent voice and spectacular imagery,” Price said. “We combine this with an open philosophical approach and leading Web 2.0 tools to bring visitors the best content, no matter where it originates. This is how we’ve been successful without having the resources of a TV network or portal.”