The NYTCO’s Boston Globe and Boston.com are considering the early 2006 launch of a premium online sports section called SportsPlus, according to an e-panel survey sent by a participant to Mark Jurkovitz. The survey describes the service as “the essential resource for news, opinions and discussion about New England’s sports teams, produced daily by the country’s best sports writers.” Yes, it sounds a lot like the New England version of TimesSelect with the Red Sox as the main attraction and a reach far beyond the Globe’s home market.
In addition to staff columns, the lengthy list of potential content (insert image of spaghetti sticking to a wall) includes blogs by players and coaches; access to photo archives and the ability to create your own photo gallery, screen saver or electronic greeting card; content from the opposing team’s newspaper web site; venues for subscribers to meet at games; MP3 recordings; e-mail alerts, etc. Some of these sound complicated economically and I’m not sure where the NYTCO/Globe ownership of an interest in the Red Sox fits in.
Last January the New York Times surveyed some readers about subscriptions offers. Premium subscription service TimesSelect was announced a few months later, and launched in September. It’s a monthly or annual pay service for non-print subs and an add-on for print subs, a model that would be followed by SportsPlus. Online premium sports content has been an iffy proposition for newspaper sites and others who saw the passion for sports as a key to the vault.
Steve Klein isn’t surprised by the idea: “Keep in mind that USA Today Online was first conceived as a subscription sports site more than a decade ago. And almost lost in the conversation about TimesSelect has been the inclusion of five sports columnists… .”
Subscriber content
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