Web 3.0 & Online Sports (Part 4)

Web 3.0 formula discussion

Context
Most of the sports sites that I went through have very good contextual nuances. These sites have something for every sports fan. I liked the way sites like NBA.com, MLB.com and NFL.com have covered the respective sports. If you love Basketball and want to check out on some stat or some team or some record then NBA is definitely the place.

Sites like Yahoo! Sports, Fox Sports, Sports Illustrated (SI.com), AOL Sports and ESPN also cover the top sports like football, soccer, tennis, basketball, golf, baseball, etc. in detail. These sites have separate categories for popular sports. I liked the fantasy section on Yahoo and ESPN, which allow users to play Fantasy Golf, Football, Hockey, Racing, etc. for free. I also liked the Top Videos on ESPN and Fox Sports.

Content
The content on most online sports sites is impressive. The users can look for scores, news, trivia, statistics, fantasy sports services, highlights and live game streaming.

At Yahoo Sports, the users can listen to live college broadcasts for their favorite teams. The users can also read match analysis and interviews with leading athletes, coaches and sports celebrities at SportStream, a weekly, interactive web cast featured by Yahoo Sports.

The ESPN Toolbar is a downloadable product, which automatically provides navigation to users of fantasy game teams. I liked it because the ESPNLocal content has been integrated, which allowed me to navigate directly to the web’s best local content on my favorite teams.

Sports Illustrated has a specialized section for kids where they can download games like Blake, Birthday Blaster, Candy Catcher, etc. and send sketches of their favorite players, read sports news, view photos, or take part in daily polls.

These apart, the users can see recorded video episodes of their preferred games, read sports reports, interviews, stream live matches, see photos of their favorite sport stars and download various games (e.g. MLB Shuffle).

Community
Community features on most sports sites are noteworthy. I was delighted to find that apart from the regular polls, live discussions, sharing of sports news or fantasy games with friends or family, most of the popular sports sites had specialized blogs for different teams. AOL has recently added fan blogs, social networking and user-generated video to its sports site.

Fox Sports allows users to form groups or be part of various online sports groups, communicate with the members, post blogs and track various sporting events.

BallHype has gone a step further by bringing in localization among fan blogs and providing interaction among the fans. At PicksPal, users can predict match results, leave comments, and gain points for correct guesses.

Commerce
Commerce on online sports sites is mainly through subscriptions, downloadable games or software applications and merchandising of sports products. Some sites have also entered into alliance with television or audio media in sports seasons to offer special coverage.

Sites like MLB, NBA and NFL also sell tickets for major sports leagues and hold auctions for used sports goods and jerseys.

But what about Sports Travel, for example?

Vertical Sarch
Today, users can search for their favorite teams and players and get the latest updates on matches. ESPN has options for searching videos and photos and provides the hottest searches at any given time. Though a very effective tool but I think there still is an opportunity for an out and out vertical search engines on sports. This may include:

* “Player Search” that allows users to look up the career stats and highlights of every player in every game
* “Team Search” to review details about various teams in different games

and numerous other nuances.

Personalization
The users get e-mail alerts for their favorite matches and timely updates on latest happenings in the sports world with customized features on newsletters. MyESPN allow users to customize the site according to their liking, so that their favorite sports and events appear on the home page. Yahoo! Sports allow users to track their favorite team’s performance through Team Tracker. BallHype also allow users to customize the home page to include local sports, game stats, etc.

(To Be Continued)

[Part 1]
[Part 2]
[Part 3]

This segment is part 4 in the series : Web 3.0 & Online Sports
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