It said the conversion of its fantasy football business to fee-based products resulted in approximately $8.8m in billings, doubling its earlier projections of $3-4.5m.
SportsLine.com offered two fantasy football products this fall, one a customisable league management service, and the other a single game product with three different price points. Approximately 65,000 leagues were formed for the league management service, resulting in approximately 825,000 teams, and more than 15,000 additional single teams were formed.
SportsLine.com's league management service was priced at $139.95 per league, with a $20 discount for returning leagues that paid by mid-August.
"We are extremely pleased with these results, which validate our decision to convert to a pay fantasy model and establish SportsLine in a solid leadership role in the fantasy sports industry," said Mike Levy, founder and CEO of SportsLine.com.
"This is strong evidence that people are willing to pay for content on the internet, provided that you give them superior products, and deliver services that add convenience."
SportsLine.com has generated more than $10m from fantasy sports subscriptions in 2002, including the fantasy football results and the $1.5m in revenue from fantasy baseball.
By comparison, an Online Publishers Association report in August 2002 stated that total revenue for the entire online sports content category in 2001, including fantasy sports, was $10m, according to research conducted by comScore Networks and based on actually observed user transactions.
An Intermarket Group survey reported in June and published in Media Life in July, ranked the top online subscription content publishers worldwide for 2002, and the fifth ranked company on that list had just under 800,000 paid subscribers. Year to date, there are approximately 800,000 unique users playing SportsLine.com's fee-based fantasy products, across all sports.
