SportingNews.com linking to SI.com?

I visit SportingNews.com probably once or twice a week, but I've never noticed this before: The site is linking out to SI.com off their main carousel packages. Here's the three screen grabs from the carousel package right now (yellow ovals added for emphasis):





The first links to Peter King's story on the refocused Lions. The second links to Andy Staples feature on AJ McCarron. And the third also links to that King story on the Lions but bothers me even more because it uses specific SI.com branding terms with King referenced by name and "Game Plan," the name of his column, as the only tease to what you might be clicking on.

It wasn't long ago that Sporting News was Sports Illustrated's top competitor. Now, they're linking directly to SI.com off their main carousel package. Sporting News has a few writers I really like, starting with Matt Hayes and Brian Straus. It seems like only last year they acquired were handed FanHouse. But the ship be sinking, as it always does when AOL is involved in journalism.

 

I'm not so sure that TSN and SI were ever really direct competitors. They were both weeklies about sports, but they had distinctly different approaches to the subject matter and there was very little advertiser overlap.

But, yeah, TSN is pretty much dying if it's not already dead. For a while, it was still a brand name, but I can't believe that means much now in an ESPN world.

 

When you say that it wasn't long ago that Sporting News was Sports Illustrated's top competitor, you mean for magazine subscriptions only, and like 10 or more years ago? In any other context, hard to say TSN was top.

 

I think it goes both ways, because I've recently seen links to Sporting News stories on SI.com.

 

It's a link-sharing agreement. It's not uncommon. SI is also doing it with SB Nation and used to do it with FanHouse.

 

The Sporting News --- perhaps seeing the writing on the wall --- has also started editorial partnerships with a few other companies, including the one I work for. It's a win-win for any online publication. I'm not sure of the agreements as they relate to print, but online, at least, it makes so much sense for companies to utilize the efficiency of link-sharing and duel promotion in these times of limited staff and resources. In my opinion, the AOL/Fanhouse partnership with TSN has only saved the publication. Given that success, I'm not surprised to see them (and even other publications) follow the same pattern.

 

Another revenue sharing deal, SI provides TSN with premium content so they get better CPM and kick percentage back to SI. Yahoo! News made similar deal with ABC news for video content.

 

That is exactly what I meant. The companies were each other's biggest competition in the weekly sports magazine field until maybe 10 years ago, maybe slightly more recently. And at that point (although probably not now), both businesses were centered on the print product.

Anyway, I suppose it's not that strange. This agreement immediately seemed very different for Sporting News or Sports Illustrated to link to SB Nation, which is a deep blog network with which you share only a general field (sports). In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have been surprised at all. It has been years since Sporting News (no longer The Sporting News or TSN) and Sports Illustrated were serious rivals. And sports writing is sports writing. SB Nation is a bigger threat than Sporting News.

 

Bad juju for Sporting News to drop the "The," wasn't it?

 

Vers: My place had a deal with SI before this deal.

I used to be a rabid "why would we link to a competitor?" guy ... and has happened with many things since I started this work in 1997, I've changed completely (although I must admit there's still one that it really pains me to acknowledge).

To use a quaint analogy, it's kind of like Miracle on 34th Street. The Macy's Santa told customers where they could find something if Macy's didn't have it, and it engendered so much good will, their sales went through the roof.

Our opinion is that people are looking for good content (after all these years, I still hate that word for some reason) and if a link to a competitor helps their experience at our place, that's fine. They're here in the first place when they see it, so why not?

If somebody else breaks a news story, we might even link to it in our headlines until we get our own.

It's all very strange, but it's all part of this new world.

 

Everything is a bigger threat than Sporting News.