• by Ken Liebeskind , August 9, 2002

Among the most successful sites for paid and premium content are sites associated with the professional sports leagues. NetRatings, which tracks site visits, released data yesterday that shows a surge in traffic to NFL.com, MLB.com, NBA.com and NHL.com.

NFL.com leads the way, with 8.4 million unique visitors per month. MLB.com has 6 million, NBA.com 3.2 million and NGL.com 1.5 million. Traffic to NFL.com peaked in January at the Super Bowl, while MLB.com traffic started increasing in February, peaked at the beginning of the season and has been steady since.

The report attributes much of the success to the paid and premium content the sites have developed. Last year, NBA.com and then MLB.com began offering in-game subscription based audio services, providing play-by-play coverage of every game. NetRatings says tens of thousands listeners a day tune in to the games.

The leagues offer a variety of subscriber packages, with many paying more for additional content, such as archived video of famous games from the past and fantasy leagues.

MLB.com also makes its premium content available through Real.com Networks. Subscribers to Real get access to MLB.com content.

NFL.com has yet to offer a subscription service, but offers datacast streams that provide play-by-play statistics without the audio. Other sports sites, such as ESPN, Fox and Sportsline, offer similar streaming content, but none offer the live play by play audio like Mlb.com and NBA.com.

The report says that unique content can deliver "sizable online audiences, even when it's for a fee. The brand strength of major league baseball and limited availability of this content make for an attractive subscription-based service."

Major league baseball has "generated a whole new revenue stream" from the premium content, the report says. T.S. Kelly, the NatRatings director and principal analyst who prepared the report, says it is replacing lost revenue from diminishing advertising sales. "The challenge of surviving on the advertising model has forced a lot of companies to experiment with pay for content opportunities," he says. "The ad model for MLB.com wasn't working to the level they could survive on, so here's an opportunity to enhance the revenue stream."