2007 Ballhype Sports Blogger Study results
Ballhype has just released their results from the 2007 Sports Blogger study, which I took part in along with 134 other sports bloggers.
Sports blogging has come a long way from the proverbial guy in his parents’ basement, glued to a computer, typing incoherent rants about the game. In addition to the thousands of individual sports fans who write for an audience of a couple hundred readers, professional sports blogs like Deadspin and FanHouse produce dozens of posts per day and receive millions of visitors per month. Some bloggers collaborate to produce content and generate traffic through a joint partnership or by joining a network. Many sports blogs produce original, informative, and entertaining content that attracts large dedicated communities. Sports bloggers even cover for each other while they’re on vacation to keep their audience (and PageRank) happy.
To find out more about who sports bloggers are and what motivates them, Ballhype asked bloggers to fill out an online survey. 135 surveys were completed July 23 – 28, 2007, providing a great set of data points with which to work, especially considering sports bloggers comprise a relatively small segment of bloggers as a whole. (In comparison, the Pew Internet and American Life Project conducted a U.S. blogger study from July 2005 to February 2006 which yielded 233 responses, of whom 6% said they blog about sports.) Because the Ballhype population sample was not randomly generated, more research is needed to validate the results for broader application.
I found it interesting that only 5% of the sports bloggers are female. I knew that the males dominated the sports blogosphere, I just guess I didn’t realize it was such a big gap.
Overall, the results are pretty interesting so go check them out if you want to know more about sports bloggers.
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2 Responses to “2007 Ballhype Sports Blogger Study results”
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August 2nd, 2007 at 1:48 pm
I have a feeling that women are more prevalent in hockey blogging than any other sport. Between you, the HLOG and several others, it seems that women are pretty well-represented in our little corner of the blogosphere. There are literally dozens of hockey blogs run by ladies.
I think a hockey-specific survey is in order.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:56 pm
I do agree with you that the hockey blogosphere has really exploded with female bloggers. When I first started early into the lockout, the only other female hockey blogger I could think of was Alanah @ Vancouver Canucks Op Ed (now Canucks & Beyond). Plus, the results were more for our interest than accurately representative of the sports blogosphere, particularly hockey.
I think a hockey specific survey would definitely be interesting.