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2007 Ballhype Sports Blogger Study

Erin posted 8/1/2007 from ballhype.com

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.

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If diplomas passed as media credentials…

By any standard, the sports bloggers who responded to our survey are very well educated, with 56% having a college degree and another 26% boasting both undergraduate and graduate diplomas. Among all bloggers, the percentage with college degrees is 37%, and among all American adults, it drops to 27% (Pew Internet and American Life Project). And in contrast to some of the stereotypes floating around, most are either employed or full-time students.

• 75% are employed, 18% are full-time students, and 6% are unemployed
• 85% own or rent, and only 10% live rent-free

Sports blogging: more time-consuming than philately

While most sports bloggers consider blogging to be a hobby, it’s one that takes up an extraordinary amount of time. Even bloggers like the next Ariana Huffington or Perez Hilton would be blown away by the hours logged by sports bloggers. Among sports bloggers, only 13% spend less than an hour per day on activities directly related to their blog; 50% spend 1-3 hours, 26% 3-5 hours, and 10% more than 5 hours per day. By contrast, the Pew Internet study of the overall blogger population found that the median amount of time spent working on blogs was 2 hours per week. Question for the next survey: how do bloggers’ spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends, pets, etc. feel about all this time spent blogging.

• 58% think of their blog as a hobby purely for fun, for 26% it’s a hobby that generates revenue, for 12% it’s a part-time job, and for 5% blogging is their full-time job
• 30% of sports bloggers spend 3-5 hours total online per day, 41% spend 5-10 hours per day, and 17% spend more than 10 hours per day online

Some visitors are more welcome than others

We didn’t ask how many people blog on company time, and for some people, blogging is their job. But if 36% of bloggers are spending more than 3 hours per day working on their blog, but only 5% blog full-time, then it’s very likely that at least some blog maintenance is going on at the office.

• To get an approximation, we examined the typical posting times for blogs tracked by Ballhype in the past 30 days, and found that on average, 924 posts per day were published in the 9 hour window between 9:00 AM and 6:00 PM EDT. This represents 55% of all posts published daily.
• From the survey, we learned that while 80% of bloggers share their work with friends and family, 37% state that their employers do not know about their blog.

As you might expect, if you don’t want your company to find out about your blog, you are more likely to use an alter ego online. 55% of bloggers whose employers do not know about the blog use a pseudonym, whereas this number drops to 33% among everyone else.

Interestingly, bloggers who don’t tell their employers about their blog spend less time per day working on their blog.

Possible explanations:

1. This group is significantly more inclined to think of the blog as a hobby (74% vs. 47%) and may be less compelled to check their site stats and comments every hour.
2. They may be more circumspect at work about checking their blog feeds or cranking out posts over lunch and in between meetings.

Not all about the Benjamins

Although making money was not the primary reason for starting their blog, 51% of sports bloggers make more than $100 per month either through ad revenue or payment for articles, not bad given this money is extra income for most. The biggest reason for continuing the blog is because it’s fun.

• 31% state they started their blog on a whim, 26% to make their opinion heard, 21% because they found mainstream media coverage lacking in some way, and less than 1% to make money

• 49% make less than $20 per month, 33% make $20-$499 per month, and 16% make greater than $500 per month
• 95% said they continue to blog because it’s fun, 73% because they have an audience, 41% for professional development, and 32% because they’re making money
• Site traffic varies widely, with 5% saying their only visitors are friends and family, and 58% receiving 1,000 to 50,000 visitors per month

Strength in numbers

Although blogging can be a solo enterprise, most sports bloggers choose to collaborate with others either on their blog or elsewhere. In addition to linking to other bloggers’ posts and commenting on their sites, bloggers join forces to produce content and attract audiences.

• 73% are contributing writers for other blogs, but most blogs still have a single owner
• Among the respondents, 46% are the only writers for their blog. 33% have 2-3 writers, 6% have 4-5, 7% have 6-8, and 7% have 11 or more.

Blogging pays it forward

For most sports bloggers, the experience has been more rewarding than expected, with most reporting that they’ve made new friends. If given the chance to blog full-time for pay, an overwhelming number of sports bloggers would take it, yet interestingly, there are plenty in this group who say their dream job is not sports related.

• For 71%, blogging is more rewarding than they expected, for 28% it’s about what they expected, and less than 1% say it’s less rewarding than expected
• 76% have made new friends, 26% have received job offers, and 9% find that it’s been hard on their romantic relationships
• 90% of bloggers would blog full-time if they were paid to do so
• 10% would be a radio or TV broadcaster in their dream job, 25% would be a professional sportswriter, 30% would choose another sports-related career, and 35% would do something not sports-related

Demographics: WM

Hold onto the edge of your seats for this last finding … Sports bloggers are predominantly white males in their mid-to-late twenties.

• 95% male, 5% female
• 87% Caucasian, 3% African-American, 4% Asian, 2% Latino, 1% Native American, and 4% Other. This skews more white than among the general US blogging population, which is 60% white, 11% African American, 19% English-speaking Hispanic, and 10% other, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
• 31% are 26-29 years old, with a total of 89% between 18 and 39 years old
• The sports bloggers who responded to this survey are concentrated on the east coast, California, and a few north-central Midwestern states. (The thumbtacks on the map below do not indicate city but are merely representative of population density within a state or province.)

Acknowledgments

Thank you to all of the sports bloggers who participated in the survey. You’ve helped us break new ground in understanding more about this community, and raised some interesting questions for us to look at in the future. We also really appreciate all of those who took the time to write in comments to provide additional context—and entertainment value.

We’re grateful to Dave Studeman, Miss Gossip, Matt Watson, Atma Brother #1, T. Kyle King, Ia287, and especially Tom Ziller for their feedback and helping us get the word out.

If you’d like to see the summarized results for each question, you can download the original file here.