creating prep football website

Here's the background: A friend of mine who has been a TV sportscaster for the past 25 years lost his last two jobs when new management came in and just decided to clean house. He's been at stations throughout the country over the years, but is divorced and does not want to move away from his young daughter. I've been in the newspaper business for 25 years and long ago got tired of the daily newspaper grind. My freind is a rather enterprising fellow and has created a sports video magazine show for a local cable network. He has made a studio out of his garage with a set and the whole nine yards, has a website and own audio and video equipment. He's basically a one-man media empire (he hires people to shoot video and edit for him whenever the need arises). There are a group of eight high schools in the region that produce high-quality football but basically fall between two media markets. While they certainly not ignored, the schools are under-served. He's planning on starting a website covering those eight teams and wants me to work with him. He brings TV and radio experience, while I have print experience. My question to anyone out there willing to provide constructive input is what would you have on your website if you were doing a similar project. Also, do you know of any current websites you feel are doing a good job in that regard that I might look at. We want to have logos of each team that you can click on to go to that team's page. We plan on rosters, schedules, statistical leaders. We plan on reviewing and previewing games, along with player profiles, which can be done both through video and print formats. I'm trying to think of things we might be able to do that would make us different from other sites. As people who have been in the business and as sports fans, what would you like to see in such a product as a consumer. Feel free to PM me if you want to. Thanks for your input.

 

I would make it interactive. Let the fans/players/coaches, etc. Post comments, photos, videos, even stories if they want.

You could have chats, forums or whatever.

But the youngsters don't consume information via the web like we do. It's not just laid out for them -- they participate.

Good luck.

 

Hopefully you are in a big enough market to get enough ad revenue. I've thought about starting up my own site, but realized that an online-only sports venture is doomed to fail.

Preps wouldn't bring enough traffic in, and you probably need five to six employees (one or two to sell ads, and one to handle the IT and web admin duties). You'd probably need more video that you think. One or two videos a week won't cut it. The site would need a one or two new videos per day, with a pre-roll sponsor.