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Can Youth Sports Coverage Pay Off Online?
Former Baltimore Sun reporter Lem Satterfield interviews a player after a high school football championship game for his new employer, DigitalSports.
(By Zachary A. Goldfarb -- The Washington Post)
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"We're going to try to own the hyperlocal space," Garcia-Ruiz said.
Garcia-Ruiz and Wheatley also are convinced that newspapers will be the destination of choice for most sports readers. Papers often double-check statistics and track down scores when teams forget to phone them in.
"We have the benefit of expertise," Wheatley said.
But some are skeptical that newspapers will be able to continue to dominate youth sports coverage. The upstarts may be more nimble. Traditional media companies "realize they have to do something different, and they're not sure how to get there," said Brad Schultz, an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi and the editor of the Journal of Sports Media.
Refining Efforts
Since the late 1990s, several new-media companies have targeted youth sports, with some 20,000 high schools nationwide. One early company, SportsHuddle, got the attention of many newspapers with its promise to compile school statistics. But it ran into early trouble and many editors felt burned in the process.
Newer companies have been more successful. HighSchoolSports.net is based on software called Schedule Star that enables school officials to keep track of schedules. It feeds that data to the High School Sports site. In October, McLean-based Gannett, the nation's biggest newspaper publisher, bought the company for an undisclosed sum.
In the spring, MaxPreps, which says it has statistics and schedules for 20,000 teams, was bought by CBS for $43 million. Also in the spring, Yahoo bought Rivals.com, a subscription sports site focused on recruiting.
Smaller operations also exist.
Dan Sousa launched Loudoun Prep Sports two years ago. Today, the site gets some 10,000 unique visitors per month. His advertising, which includes banners from the local swim team and steak shop, is sufficient to pay him full time.
"I'm on duty and working 24 hours a day," he said. "I really can't go out to dinner without running into an assistant high school coach."
The DigitalSports of the world also must compete with outlets that are trying to exploit even smaller niches. In Alexandria, Thomas Jefferson High School cross country coach Matt Ryan said he checks http:/
"He's kind of pursuing his own passion," Ryan said. "It's that niche."
