Yankees behind Red Sox in websites too

[Key Lime Lee]

From the NY Times:

The Boston Red Sox's recent edge over the New York Yankees appears to extend to the digital domain. And George Steinbrenner probably can't do anything about it. Last week, the sports publisher Street & Smith's released its ranking of professional sports Web sites, and in the baseball category the Red Sox led the major leagues while the Yankees were near the cellar - in 27th place among 30 teams.

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The Boston Red Sox were first in a survey of Major League Baseball Web sites.
The ratings, published by Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal, were drawn from a study by the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which evaluated the sites according to content, design, fan engagement and merchandise for sale.

The Yankees' management was not happy to see its vaunted brand rated so low.

The ranking is illogical because the Yankees organization has no influence over the Web site, said Lonn Trost, the Yankees' chief operating officer. "We don't control it," he said, "and we don't provide content."

No major league team has controlled its own Web site since 2000, when Major League Baseball centralized Internet operations for the teams. Each team agreed to pay $4 million over four years to set up a company, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, to design and operate team Web sites. The teams each received a 3 percent stake in the Web company.

"We put a lot of emphasis on creating original and multimedia content," said Dinn Mann, the senior vice president and editor in chief of Major League Baseball Advanced Media. While there is a uniform look and feel to all 30 Web sites, each team's content is the responsibility of a webmaster employed by Mr. Mann's organization.

For Mr. Trost and the Yankees, there is some solace. According to Nielsen NetRatings, more than a million people visited the Yankees site last month, compared with 977,000 who checked out the Red Sox site.

[Cubbie Bear]

I thought they all were "cookie cutter" sites from MLB, virtually all the same

[LaTda]

I thought they all were "cookie cutter" sites from MLB, virtually all the same

yes, they are-
- each having their own content webmaster..

thanks for posting this article!!! I've always wondered how it was setup since they all referred to mlb.com

[captainjoe]

From the NY Times:

The ratings, published by Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal, were drawn from a study by the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which evaluated the sites according to content, design, fan engagement and merchandise for sale.

Do you think there could have been any home field advantage?