• by February 12, 2001

Even though the XFL television ratings victory was short- lived, the website activity for the new football league, jointly owned by the World Wrestling Federation and NBC, seems to point to a trend.

For decades, we've debated the effectiveness of broadcast ads during sporting events. Enter the web. Enter sports sites. Current result - much bigger debate. How about running online ads on sports sites affiliated with a sports event? To this day, the wider-spread opinion is that people will not get off the couch during a game to log on to the web, so what's the point of running ads on sports sites?

But, here are two sets of data that may change that mind-set.

The second XFL game saw a 50% ratings drop off, from a 10.3 on Feb, 3 to a 5.1 this past Saturday. The league also went from beating ABC, CBS, and FOX, to losing to all three.

But, the Nielsen//NetRatings Internet ratings report for the week ending February 4, shows that traffic to XFL.com rocketed 224%, making it the third fastest growing site at home during the week of its first season. The site attracted 463,000 unique visitors, as compared to 143,000 visitors the week prior.

Going back in time to SuperBowl 2001, nothing seemed to go CBS Sports' way during the Super Bowl, dragging the TV rating down to one of the event's lowest in 30 years.

But, the number of people logging on to the official Super Bowl website, Superbowl.com, soared 269%. About 359,000 unique visitors logged on to the site on Sunday, compared to 97,000 visitors the day before, Nielsen/NetRatings said then.

The moral of the story is - it may not be worth it to run broadcast spots during sporting events. But it's clear that people DO get up off the couch to log on to the web during sporting events and their potential attention to your banner ads definitely is worth it.