How important is the sports section to the paper?

And we've had calls and e-mails criticizing us in sports for flat-out missing a huge story, when it was on A1 with 3 photos.

 

Short answer: In many markets (most?) sports drives circulation, but not advertising. How do you reconcile that? It's the desire to see sports that gets the paper in the door and once it's in the door, the other sections get seen, likely to specifically look for ads.

So despite not having much advertising -- men ages 30-50 who read the section tend not to spend a ton of money on themselves -- it is a big reason why the Dillards ad in the A section does get seen.

 

Ask your publisher to run an experiment, drop sports for a month and see the change in circulation. Or do that with any other section.

 

In the grand scheme, the content of the sports section is not the most important news. In business scheme, there's no doubt that it's what can drive readership because it's the most entertaining news.

 

Not too important when "stickies" which attach to the outside of the paper roll in the form of an ad wipe out any 7 p.m. college football games in a strong college football town. Heard that one today. That's the kind of shit that if it hasn't buried those sports sections it will.

 

Sports books don't sell a lot because fans are fragmented. Steelers fans don't care about Derek Jeter. Yankees fans don't care about Kobe Bryant. Etc.
And it's not just between teams, but also sports. Basketball fans might not like baseball, who might not like hockey.
Add it all together, though, and sports might sell more entertainment tickets than anything but the movies.

 

Washington Times eliminated its sports and metro sections as a cost-cutting move and as a way to "re-position" the rest of the paper's content in the DC market.

About a year later, the folks who made those decisions are out of work. Circulation plummeted.

Sports - - and metro news - - are vital to a newspaper. Without them, there isn't much reason to subscribe; the "other stuff" is too easily available elsewhere.

 

Having lived in generally mid-sized towns, I really haven't given a damn about most 1As I saw. Opinion page? Maybe. Sports? Definitely. If it was something I can't get online.

 

Horrible comparison.
A prep story? Johnny scored four touchdowns? What is anybody going to say about that?
And again, even more fragmentation.
Johnny scored 4 TDs for West High? East High doesn't care, unless it was against them.

 

I've never liked it myself, and I've worked in sports nearly 30 years.
Unless it's huge -- coach firing, trade for a household name -- I've always believed if we're going to devote a whole section of the newspaper to sports, that's plenty.

 

Interesting thread, DW. And my answer would be "very important."

The prep/local college gamers, feature stories on local athletes and even (ugh) club sports coverage is something readers can't find any where else

Regarding the lack of ads in sports, check out the ad reps in your building. Most of them don't know about/have no interest in sports. Therefore, they don't sell their clients on putting the ads in probably the best-read section of the paper.

Lately our shop has been doing better by putting restaurant/bar and Dish Network-type tech ads in the sports section, so thankfully, there's been a bit more space on Friday-Saturday-Sunday, which used to be TINY on the days we had the most content to jam in there.