I'm Kareem--thanks for the insightful comments. Some new stuff that I have not heard yet from others. > Filtering comments - I should have known. They just don't get it. For the record, comments are manually approved so that spam does not get through. I don't filter any comments, and especially not ones that aren't favorable towards ESPN (how else are we supposed to figure out what will make you guys come back?) Admittedly, one of the big competitive hurdles we face is one most of you mention: we charge for our analysis, while it is offered for free on sites like Sportsline, Yahoo, CNNSI, etc. That being said, I would take our analysts head-to-head with anybody's (Chad Ford has a tremendous NBA network that he allows us to be a part of, for example). One of the big draws we offer is that you get an ESPN The Magazine subscription free with your Insider subscription. We also have Insider tools that appeal to Fantasy players, and a vast array of Fantasy-specific content. But none of that really speaks to the point all of you raise: it's hard to compete with Free. Either we need to do a better job of marketing the content that we do have, or we need to show you guys why it's so compelling that you should pay for it. Thanks for your suggestions--if you have more, please feel free to email me at kareem at reemer dot com. Thanks! kareem
Calling all ESPN outsiders
I'm Kareem--thanks for the insightful comments. Some new stuff that I have not heard yet from others. > Filtering comments - I should have known. They just don't get it. For the record, comments are manually approved so that spam does not get through. I don't filter any comments, and especially not ones that aren't favorable towards ESPN (how else are we supposed to figure out what will make you guys come back?) Admittedly, one of the big competitive hurdles we face is one most of you mention: we charge for our analysis, while it is offered for free on sites like Sportsline, Yahoo, CNNSI, etc. That being said, I would take our analysts head-to-head with anybody's (Chad Ford has a tremendous NBA network that he allows us to be a part of, for example). One of the big draws we offer is that you get an ESPN The Magazine subscription free with your Insider subscription. We also have Insider tools that appeal to Fantasy players, and a vast array of Fantasy-specific content. But none of that really speaks to the point all of you raise: it's hard to compete with Free. Either we need to do a better job of marketing the content that we do have, or we need to show you guys why it's so compelling that you should pay for it. Thanks for your suggestions--if you have more, please feel free to email me at kareem at reemer dot com. Thanks! kareem