If you go to any of the major sports sites on the Web—ESPN.com, Yahoo Sports,, Sports Illustrated—you’ll find pretty much the same thing: a picture of Michael Phelps, Olympics coverage, and maybe some fantasy baseball. David Katz, a former Yahoo executive who used to run Yahoo Sports, is trying something different with SportsFanLive, which has just launched in beta.
Rather than being organized around the big sports headlines of the day, SportsFanLive is organized around the fans themselves and the obsessions. Instead seeing the same general sports information that everyone else sees on the homepage and taking thre or four clicks to get to the page about your team, SportsFanLive lets you put the information you want up front. You tell it what teams you follow, and whatever is happening with those teams is front and center when you visit the site. As he was creating the site, Katz asked himself:
What do sports fans want to do? Consume content about their favorite teams and players, connect with like-minded (or non-like-minded) fans, and compete.
SportsFanLive looks a little bit like a green Netvibes, with different widgets arranged on the page: a fun poll up top, a feed of major sports story headlines, another feed of top headlines from the teams you are following, and a Facebook-like FanFeed that lets you keep up with all of the sports news and events your friends are watching. There is also a FanFinder that shows you local sports bars where tonight’s game is being watched (organized by team loyalty).
The site is designed to recreate the chest-thumping bravado of a sports bar. Bragging rights are key, which is why the site also includes virtual betting. Says Katz:
Every sports fan thinks they know everything about sports, but they all know something different.
With SportsFanLive, Katz is trying to create a friendlier gathering place for sports fans than the faceless major sports sites. But he still has a lot of work to do. A Facebook or MySpace app would be nice for starters, so that fans don’t have to recreate their social networks. There are also simple things he could do, like letting fans take their team headline widget and embed it anywhere on the Web. Also, mobile and Twitter integration are key if Katz wants fans at the game to be able to interact with their friends and other fans online.
The company that operates SportsFanLive is called Sports Media Ventures, and is based in Los Angeles. It faces competition from all the big sports sites, as well as social sports sites such as Citizen Sports, Screaming Sports,, and SportsTwit. All you sports fans out there, chime in. Would you use it?
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The only community-like sports sites that can survive these days are those tailored to sports betting and fantasy sports. Everything else has already been played out especially with the integration of Web 2.0 resources. Plus, mlb.com, nba.com and nfl.com are so interactive and advanced what more do you really need if you’re a fan?
There is no end though, more websites are needed as the fan following is growing and sports is something like movies which is always growing and never stops.
I’m so tired of the US media bias, especially NBC. So many great athletes and all they can do is talk about Michael Phelps. “Greatest Olympian”? Bullshit, maybe we should have 20 different variations of Track & field and we’ll see who wins the most medals.
Hmmm… running backwards, crawling to the finish, do the worm to the finishline, can you think of more…?
looks awesome
what is netvibes though?
Isn’t this like FanNation and YardBarker and every other sports “social network”? Give me a sports site with original content and insight. This is JASSS.
Looks like Yardbarker minus the business model! Seriously, many have tried this over the past few years… but the reason nobody’s ever heard of ScreamingSports, FanIQ, et al. is not about execution… it’s about a flawed premise. Sports fans don’t care about other random sports fans unless they’re a good looking girl or they can win some money from them. Yardbarker and BleacherReport are the only guys with any traction, and that’s because they focus on pumping out quality content. Oh, and FanNation is popular because SI.com gives them distribution.
At best, I see SportsFanLive as a glorified RSS reader for sports fans… but who really needs another RSS reader?
Yes, it’s extremely Yardbarker-like to my mind.
And FYI, several big sports marketing companies are attempting to set up exactly this type of fan-driven, social media-modeled site at this very moment. Most of them are attempting to get me to write for them, generally for little or no compensation. Well, ef that, I’m… um…expensive.
I think it’s more of a green MyESPN than Netvibes.
I wanna see whether this stuff will choke SDP guys or not,lols…
I’m glad I didn’t take your word for it and I actually went to yardbarker. It’s nothing like yardbarker. Good luck with your sports writing, sounds like you are going do “effing” great.
I think this is a nice idea. It adds a little gambling which is a cool feature.
~ Jim
Went to their Penn State football page. They have our next game wrong. They list it as September 6th against Oregon State. In fact, PSU opens on August 30th against Coastal Carolina.
Great idea but horrible execution. I can’t even log in! All I see is some big box pop up and a bunch of errors when you try to fill some stuff in. When I close that box, whole site has gray overlay! Why didn’t you guys TEST before releasing?!
Miserable launch
Problem must be with your computer. I had no problem at all.
The site does not do any of those things…I like it.
I think the site looks really cool. Those live bloggers are going 24/7 for 17 days covering the Olympics. Crazy.
Yardbarker.com is getting it done in this niche and us sports fans are extremely loyal once we find something we like. So I don’t see this new one doing well.
It looks nice, but coming from the other side of the Atlantic, it offers me no value at all. Barring that, it’s well designed, packed with nice features and a strong proposition for a beta phase site.
I like the sportsbar/google maps mashup, I like the widget type execution of the news (soon more widgets I hope). I miss the integration with other social media.
One killer application, tool or feature would be nice. Why will I return to this site?
Why Google isn’t part of the sport industry?
- Sport needs search tool
- Sport is more and more integrated in social media
http://visionoftheworld-bertra.....sport.html
We launched FanBoom.com back in January, which allows you to customize the news from the teams of your choosing. Its very similar to SportsFanlive.com, sans the community features and fantasy. We are a straight up content aggregator. We have an added benefit to SportsFanLive though, we allow you to read news from the sources of your own choosing, sportsfanlive just gives it all to you.
Im interested to see how this site does, although do we really need another social network? YardBarker already does an excellent job of that.
Fanboom looks kinda gray to me and doesn’t seem to have the original content of Sportsfanlive. I like their funny poll questions and the Olympics stuff. But I think they need to make the original content more prominent on the home page. A few pics would help too.
It’s blatantly obvious that they are simply utilizing data from STATS, having some editors categorize news from AP, and then providing a really generic social layer. What’s the point? I’d like perspective on news - not just news from one source! On top of that - why would I want to interact with people on the site? There is nothing to talk about.
Just use http://www.fanboom.com - unbiased news aggregation.
What are you talking about? They have lots of original content. I see four guys live blogging about the Olympics and more than 20 people providing video, photo and commentary from Beijing. They also hired veteran sports reporter Victor Chi, who is well-known to Sharks fans in the Bay Area. Go Sharks!
Let me guess. You work for Fanboom, and you opinion is really unbiased.
FanBoom rocks - we dont need fancy executives from Yahoo to prove our worth.
Katz couldnt get anything done at Y! He tried to take credit for the good ideas he had no part in and quickly pushed responsibility when things went poorly. He was eventually fired and now is faltering publicly on his own.
I love you guys like you…I don’t know you or Katz but your post makes you look pathetic and everyone else look fantastic. What kind of guy rips someone like that unless he stole your girlfriend.
would rather see more sports blogs with a defined purpose - for instance, humour/crazy things happening in sports: http://www.frostedsports.tv
i want to visit sites with a purpose or a focus in mind, rather than another ‘aggregator’ or ‘community’
In America, ambition and vision is frowned upon
*see JackJ
ceelo - the purpose and focus of an aggregator is to filter out all the crap you read and give you the good stuff.
people dont want to spend time figuring out where to turn on a site. I checked it out but shut it down just as fast b/c it was overkill.. to many things at once when you sign on. idea is cool… but I agree with Dave- horrible execution.
I agree with Dave. Original content and a solid business model rule which is what Bleacher Report and Yardbarker have. Sports Fan Live doesn’t do anything different.
Maybe they can separate themselves with their marketing. They were able to get this on TechCrunch.
Focused sites like athetlicsnation.com are where it’s at for sure.
I’ll check this new one out now but I can speak for many when I say that the best out there right now is http://www.rootzoo.com
Much more complete than any of these others and already very alive with members. They do a great job managing all the small issues too.
I am a soccer and a football fan so this could save me a few clicks in the morning to see whats going on. But the key to this site is incorporating fantasy leagues. Maybe allowing you to chose specific players that you’d like updates on. This way I can have access to soccer news football news and my fantasy players all on one site.
Told them my favorite team (SF Giants) and signed up. Logged in, went to add my second-favorite team. Oops … no soccer allowed. Seeya later, SportsFanLive.
I agree. It’s kind plain looking and lacks any original content, fantasy sports or video. I like what http://www.opensports.com is doing much better. Seems like they have a much better game plan by asking fans to help build their site
They’re paying me in shares and Romanian cigarettes. And I don’t even smoke.
I went on opensports after i read this…it took me 45 minutes to load a page. And those graphics behind salisbury are brutal. i’ll stick with espn for the fantasy advice
I agree, opensports is a really nice platform.
i commend the ex yahoo/cbs wonderkind executive for his efforts, but if he was so smart why didnt yahoo or cbs digital listen to his concept and leverage there traffic to make $$ with his concept
See great Sachin Tendulkar’s video on:-
http://super100sports.com/Play.aspx?vid=352
SportsFanLive is a nice site, a little clunky right now. YardBarker is the leader in this space and does a nice job - although they are more focused on building their ad network than their original content.
Take a look at http://www.smackcaster.com and let us know how we’re doing in this space.