Sportazine

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Sports people love stats, right? Geeks love stats, right? Well, here are some Sportazine.com stats to celebrate a record July! Even though August is only 3 days old, August is well placed to absolutely obliterate our July record!

First off, July was not a record if you look at the hard data. April-June of 2010 all had more than four times as much traffic as any other month (until July 2012, which is not 4 times less than April 2010, but is four times less than than other two of those outlier months). I don’t really know what caused such a massive spike those months. Some of it is that we started off strong. February 2010, March 2010 and July 2010 were our 7th, 6th and 5th biggest months, respectively. Having 1, 2, 3 in the middle of that doesn’t seem that awkward, but 3rd being more than 4 times as large as 5th doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, especially when I don’t know what articles might have been bringing people specifically during those times.

Of course, it’s entirely possible our all-time top article was bringing in the traffic. After the World Cup the traffic started to wain. Since I can’t explain the popularity of those months, I am discounting them a bit.

The stat I thought might be most interesting was when our traffic spiked by sports season. The Olympics and World Cup seem to get lots of traffic, but are there other trends?

Once I massage the data for the three outlier months, I get something pretty nice:

All-time best months:

7 July
6 June (massaged 2010 data)
8 August (using the hits from the first three days of August — and it doesn’t need many more to overtake June)
10 October (only two data points)
2 February
3 March
5 May (massaged 2010 data)
9 September (only two data points)
4 April (massaged 2010 data)
11 November (only two data points)
1 January (only two data points)
12 December (only two data points)

Here, it looks like people watch more sports in the summer, or we write more in the summer, or something. I assume that the NBA/NHL finals have something to do with why June is so high on the list. The start of NFL, College Football and the major European football (soccer) leagues can probably explain August. July on the other hand, is confusing. MLS and baseball — and just a little of the Olympics this year. We don’t do a lot of MLB coverage and we really don’t do a ton of MLS coverage. The MLS season starts in March and ends in November (December this year with league expansion), so July doesn’t really make a lot of sense except that it’s one of the only things on and football/soccer is

If I increase the massage point by 100%, then something interesting happens. This is what happens to the months.

June
July
May
April
August
October
February
March
September
November
January
December

The months start to cluster a little more under this arrangement. It’s hard to say why September is so low. MLS is still going. MLB is still going. EPL is still really getting started. October being higher than September can be explained by the beginning on NHL, NBA and college basketball. Even if the season actually starts in November there is preseason. College football is getting heavy into the conference schedule and teams are starting to get knocked out of the national championship picture. But is that enough for a 70% increase in traffic?

I do not really mean to get to the bottom of what sport is the most popular on SportAZine. There are too many factors and to do a truly scientific study does not make sense with the amount of data we have. I do think it’s interesting to think about. If nothing else, I will make sure I put forth an extra effort November-January. If I put in the extra effort and it still comes out on bottom at the end of 2012, then, well, it’s you, not me. If we know that’s the case, then we can focus our attention away from the holiday season. Maybe people are spending time with their families and not on SportAZine and if that’s the reason for the lull, then great.

I also wanted to do a little breakdown based on year.

2010: Even with my massively massaged 3 months, 2010 almost doubles the monthly average for 2011 and 2012. 2012 had some rough months, so I’m hopeful for it to pull through since July and August are looking so good. Now it is true that Music Manumit started in late May of 2010. One would think with me out of the country in June 2010 and Music Manumit picking up, that the early months of SportAZine would have been the most productive. That’s not exactly what happened though.

2011: For whatever reason, 2011 was a bad year for SportAZine. I started law school in fall of 2011, but 8 months had already passed by the time we got there. I was dating Wendy for the complete year of 2011, but I was with Wendy for 9 months of 2010, so that can hardly explain the massive difference. What’s more, even with the massively massaged data, some of the biggest months in 2010 were when I was dating Wendy.

2012: 2012 is currently doing slightly better than 2011, if you count current August data as all of August. If you project August out for the rest of the month, then I guess I will have to stop massaging data. Even with no massaging, August 2012 is the new champion. Still, I have got to be realistic and predict a lull once I had back to school. Based on the current monthly average in 2012 though, 2012 is almost exactly the average between the unmassaged 2010 data and the 2011 data.

Again, I don’t know that we need to be too scientific about the causes of what causes one year to be better than the next. It is interesting to see how trends go.

Lessons learned:

1) It takes time to build momentum.

2) World Events (Olympics and World Cup) are good for business.

3) It’s good to keep in touch with old friends.

Momentum

June was supposed to be the big revival month for SportAZine.com. I had planned for months to do Euro coverage. However, it wasn’t working. I don’t know if it was my coverage was poor or I just did a poor job getting the word out about the site. Anyway, eventually that momentum came and it looks like we are riding it right now!

World Events

It’s possible that patriotism is the reason for the hits. The European Championships are huge. Many people think it is a better tournament that the World Cup. However, our Day 6 coverage of the Euros is tied for our least viewed article. Tournaments where the US is involved would explain why the US v Guatemala mention in the Day 6 coverage didn’t garner any hits. People aren’t searching for the US, except during tournament time. Then again, a US Women’s Friendly, is our second biggest article. I would have to go back and look at the articles during the time, but the Women’s World Cup and the CONCACAF Gold Cup, both happened in 2011 and the US even made the final in both.

Old Friends

I really want to think Eric Crews, my brother Evan and Alexandro Colorado for helping SportAZine.com stay going. Jeff and I really couldn’t have done it without you!