Sports-blog network SB Nation is now officially sanctioned by the NHL. Posts from its 29 hockey blogs now appear as linked headlines on the homepage of NHL.com. CEO Jim Bankoff, a former AOL executive, tells me that he is in discussions with other major sports leagues for similar link deals. You’d think that investor Ted Leonsis, the former AOL vice chairman who owns the Washington Capitals, helped make some introductions at the NHL. But Bankoff says that wasn’t the case. We’ll see if the other leagues bite.
If they don’t do it already, the official sites of the various sports leagues like the NFL, NBA, and MLB should definitely consider adding sports blogs to the mix of information they make available on their sites. I am not sure how many true sports fans trust the sanitized news you typically find on those sites, but they are a good starting point. Adding some blog coverage might make fans feel the leagues are at least open to more points of view. It shouldn’t be limited to one blog network either, but I can see the appeal of handing those links over to SB Nation and letting them deal with quality control.
SB Nation pulls together what amounts to local sports coverage under a single advertising umbrella (although professional teams have fans everywhere). The wider it can distribute links in places where sports fans might gather online, the more readers it should be able to expose to its various blogs. Last year, SB Nation raised $5 million from Accel Partners, Allen & Company, and Leonsis.
Bankoff says SB Nation is up to 5 million unique visitors a month across its network of about 200 blogs, based on internal metrics, and he says that is growing at a rate of 20 percent per month.
This is a great first step…presuming there are rapidly following steps in other sports niches: college football, baseball (MLB and farm leagues), soccer/futbol, etc.
Bleacher Report seems to be stealthy growing in comparison:
http://bit.ly/TJRiO
You’ve only linked to Compete.com stats for SB Nation’s hub page. Since SB Nation is a network of 200 sites, you’d have to add up all of that traffic to compare it to others (Quantcast does so). SB Nation does cover all major pro sport teams as well as college and other sports such as MMA (MMAMania.com, BloodyElbow.com), Golf (Waggleroom.com), Nascar (4ever3blog.com) and others.
Even better!
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congrats to Jim and Tyler. SB Nation has a valuable property with organic growth, good content, and loyal users…it can and will scale to grow larger…big believer and have been for a long time.
Interesting. I wonder what this means in terms of oversight on these blogs. Does this mean that these bloggers can’t post anything negative about the NHL, a team, or player? Sometimes I think quality blogs like the ones on SB Nation are better to be left independent. I think that is what makes them appealing to sports fans that are looking for something different then standard news on NHL.com.
Joe ~
In this case NHL is only selecting posts that they want. Our writers are free to publish what they want on their sites, but the NHL doesn’t have to take it. We don’t tell them what to publish on their site and vice-versa.
That sounds like a great deal then. Congratulations to your team.
Hmm… no mention that SB Nation was founded by Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas?
Awesome – NHL.com has made some really positive changes over the last couple of years – this is another one of those changes.
I also liked how NHL.com have linked up to Yahoo Fantasy Sports.