S
treetZebra.com
will launch the Chicago section of its site within a month and has just introduced its free StreetZebra Chicago magazine.Chicago follows Los Angeles in StreetZebra.com's plan for major-city sections that function as broad recreation- and spectator-sport resources, and it will introduce several more city sections this year. The company bills the site as "a one-stop source where peewee to pro users can get it, find it, buy it, join it, read it, sign up for it or play it if it's related to local sports and recreation" — catchy in the way of McDonald's "Two all-beef patties, special sauce ..." Big Mac ads of the 1970s.
The magazine is designed as an ad vehicle and a branding vehicle, a way of driving traffic to the site.
"Everyone is talking about shrinking leisure time, but a tremendous amount of that time is spent in sports and leisure," said Andy Solomon, company president and CEO. "All the areas we're covering are actually niches within the larger but fragmented market of local sports and recreation, and we want to create a network of information for this market."
The company finished a $10 million round of venture-capital funding last month.
Was it the endorsement? In his first week as fantasy site SmallWorld.com
's golf commentator, Hal Sutton held off Tiger Woods to win The Players Championship last Monday. Sutton's comments on coming tournaments are designed to help fantasy players make their picks in the Small World Golf game.His notes on the TPC were prescient, from "The greens are undulating and you need to be precise with your iron shots" to "If Tiger is hitting his irons well, he will be on the leaderboard." Sutton led wire-to-wire thanks to strong iron play, and the tricky greens forced Woods to miss several putts under 15 feet as his comeback attempt fell short by a stroke. Sutton's seasonlong deal with SmallWorld is in the low six figures; he earned $1,080,000 for his TPC victory.
TodaysSports.com
is running a seasonlong memorabilia-auction promotion that will pay winning bidders premiums if the players represented by the memorabilia reach predetermined statistical milestones. The premiums range from $5,000 to $570,000 and are underwritten by Lloyds of London. For example, if Houston Astros closer Billy Wagner saves 50 or more games this year, the winning bidder of the Wagner item pockets $50,000. Winning bidders have the option of putting their items back on the block later in the season to capitalize on the possibility of a statistical milestone being reached.ActiveUSA.com
has changed its name to Active.com to reflect its expansion into online event registration in Europe, the United Kingdom, Asia, Australia, Africa and New Zealand.Teaming up: Olympic swimmer, broadcaster and women's sports activist Donna de Varona
has joined the Fogdog.com board of directors. Julie Foudy, U.S. women's national soccer team co-captain, has joined Eteamz.com's board. Pro surfer Peter Mel has signed an endorsement deal with action sports retailer Fusion.com.Phoenix Suns guard Penny Hardaway
has taken Jason Kidd's place as the NBA member of a golf outing available to the high bidder in a charity auction just concluded on www.suns.com. Kidd broke his ankle in a recent game.Noah Liberman can be reached at noahl@dsl.telocity.com.
