Sports site Fanball.com will begin its coverage Sunday of the National Hockey League and NASCAR as those professional sports leagues head into new seasons.
The site also has begun beefing up its coverage of the National Basketball Association and the Professional Golfers' Association, with plans to offer more stories on individual players and their rankings by position. Game previews and online chats with editorial writers are other enhanced features at the site.
Fanball.com has been targeted to fantasy sports league participants as a source of insider information. It offers original news in six sports, as well as a fantasy football league.
Adding hockey and race car coverage to its news offering was meant to tap into a new audience, said Robert Kelen, vice president of business development at Fanball.com Inc., Minnetonka, MN. However, the site will remain focused on the 30 million-plus market of fantasy league participants.
“Adding new sports won't make us ESPN,” he said. “We won't have a brand with that type of recognition in a million years. But we are always looking for ways to attract new and different types of viewers.”
Average viewers in August spent more than three hours at the site, which was the best “stickiness” performance in the sports category, according to PC Data Online, Reston, VA. However, the market research firm ranked Fanball.com 14th in unique users, pulling in 532,000 viewers that month.
