Thursday, July 20, 2006
*sticky* A message to all the anonymous posters and lurkers out there...
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We’d love to know more about you and what you think about this site. Please post a comment on this thread telling us a little about yourself i.e. your name, where you’re from and Hammers connection etc and tell us what you think of the site.
Also have you considered registering with blogspot? That way we could interact between users and add diversity to the overall site contribution.
We’d also be very interested in anybody who would be willing and able to make an intelligent contribution in the form of articles. If you'd like to do this please email whubris on whubris@aapt.net.au. Contributions from Australia, England, or anywhere in the world are welcome if they are all about the club we love, West Ham United.
For all you Brisbane based Hammers, email brisbanehammers@hotmail.com to join the mailing list (don't worry, we hardly ever email anything out, just a couple of times a year when we have a gathering.) Other Hammers, check out the "Contacts" menu on the left to find local Hammers groups. If you would like to start a local Hammers supporters group or are a member of one, email whubris@aapt.net.au and whubris will put your details under this menu item.
You can also leave a message on the guestbook at any time.
To our knowledge there are only a handful of regular readers who comment on here which is inconsistent with our hit counter which has proudly surpassed the 10k mark. So please step up and introduce yourselves :-)
Posted by Dave at 11:59 pm
whubris said...
Hi, my name's whubris, only it isn't really, it's just a half baked attempt at humour.
said...
Im dan, live in dagenham so hee is the West Ham connection and I have visted this site alot in the past.
said...
This is too funny. Watch Roberto Carlos let Henry score the goal to beat Brasil. 7 frame caputures.
Slide show - 7 frames.
heh heh.
Lazy bugger.
said...
SMH.COM.AU This may be a new era in Australia's appreciation of football and new media, writes Julian Lee.
NOT content with watching the FIFA World Cup in record numbers on television, Australians flocked to the internet to hoover up coverage, blogging, tipping, streaming videos and catching up on the news while the traditional media slept, quite literally.
Figures due out later this week will confirm that up to half a million people - or 6 per cent of the online population - visited World Cup websites each day of the tournament, boosting visitors to sport sites by as much as 75 per cent.
Lachlan Brahe, general manager, media operations, of online media buyer emitch, says: "I think it will be fair to say that all major publishers will have increased their audience but the most significant thing is that the number of page impressions [how much they viewed] will have also increased."
Brahe says the amount of advertising dollars spent on the medium rose during the tournament but declined to say by how much.
Although the number of Australians going to the web for cup coverage was dwarfed by countries with a more ingrained football culture such as Brazil, Germany and Britain, observers are citing the World Cup as a turning point in consumer behaviour.
When it came to watching videos on the web, anything remotely linked to football was a major drawcard.
Nielsen Net Ratings senior analyst Andrew Eckford says that while the figures might represent "a modest uplift" in the number of people going online, they are likely to be spending longer there and viewing more.
"It's an event that has made for a far more intense visitation and usage of sport and news websites by online consumers," he says. "Longer term I would say that it's making the internet the first point of contact for contemporary events - it's made it the preferred medium for up-to-the minute information."
Nielsen found that while the usual spikes in traffic remained - morning, lunchtime and early evening before people left work - the cup created its own peak hour of late evening.
"If there was no newspaper for 12 hours or nothing on the TV for a couple of hours, people were turning to the web in the lead-up to the game," Eckford says. All the games were played in the early hours of the morning Australian time.
Mobile phone operator Hutchison 3, which had the rights to stream video highlights to its subscribers' handsets, was surprised by the volumes. "What fascinated us is how many people watched it on their phones and for how long - this is while the match was actually taking place in the early hours of the morning," 3 spokeswoman Liz Rex says. "Up to and including the Australia versus Brazil match we had 300,000 streams but then it grew steadily to more than 800,000."
While there was no disputing the dominance of TV - 8.8 million people or 63 per cent of Australia's five capital cities' viewing population tuned into SBS - the web became the home of the football nerd. Minutiae such as player and team statistics, the latest odds, tipping competitions and fantasy team draws all lured more people to the web than other media. It also drew more women and a broader demographic, according to Nielsen's research.
The amount of video streamed from some of the major sites surpassed expectations even though football's governing body, FIFA, restricted what could be broadcast over the net. Yahoo! had a global deal with FIFA to show highlights for the first time in the tournament's history and locally Yahoo!7 negotiated a deal with local football authorities for the Socceroos.
Globally more than 31 million videos of football coverage were streamed from Yahoo! in the first 10 days, the latest figures available. Not that those restrictions seemed to matter; fans snapped up anything that fed the appetite for World Cup fever.
Ninemsn's video diary by a Dutch comic act called Boomchicago and a video diary by a roving reporter pulled in 200,000 video streams, making it into ninemsn's top four video categories for the period.
Andy Mallinson, managing director of online media agency NextX, says: "One of the real winners were peripheral services not directly related to any sponsorship to the World Cup such as BigPond's use of Roy and HG, who didn't directly have World Cup rights but they were able to create compelling content online and on mobiles which people were prepared to download in their droves.
"Are we seeing here the future of sports commentary and sports broadcasting online? Is the web now becoming the place for sport analysis - be it comedic or serious?"
Fairfax Digital ended the tournament with an unprecedented 700,000 views of videos, again relying on anything but live coverage to entertain viewers. Wraps after the games overlaid with live crosses to Sydney Morning Herald reporters and pundits still managed to get 36,361 viewers.
Fairfax Digital's national sales director, Liam Walsh, says that with the Ashes cricket and the English Premier League soccer on the horizon, video is the way to go.
"We will increase our video. There's a real appetite for it and we can do that for the Ashes," he says.
Now media buyers are asking if they can retain that audience.
Walsh believes so. "That audience is only going to grow - they are not going to go away. There are another 6 million people out there who have yet to come online and sport is going to be a growth area."
Given that AFL and NRL still managed to be among the top three sporting websites during the World Cup, it remains to be seen whether soccer will be a one-hit wonder on the web.
"Hopefully the Australian soccer stakeholders can capitalise on this period to further grow interest in the sport," Nielsen's Eckford says.
said...
Hi
I was just wondering what the quality of the A-league is like, how goods the football?, how popular is it? and can it become one of the best leagues outside Europe??
whubris said...
yeah, it's OK - I'd say lower level Championship to League One quality. It's a good league, at least most people I know enjoyed it. Crowds averaged about 12,000 across the league from what I remember - Qld Roar and Sydney averaged about 14-15,000. Be a few years before it's considered one of the best in the world methinks :-)
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whubris said...Hi, my name's whubris, only it isn't really, it's just a half baked attempt at humour.
said...Im dan, live in dagenham so hee is the West Ham connection and I have visted this site alot in the past.
said...This is too funny. Watch Roberto Carlos let Henry score the goal to beat Brasil. 7 frame caputures.
Slide show - 7 frames.
heh heh.
Lazy bugger.
said...SMH.COM.AU This may be a new era in Australia's appreciation of football and new media, writes Julian Lee.
NOT content with watching the FIFA World Cup in record numbers on television, Australians flocked to the internet to hoover up coverage, blogging, tipping, streaming videos and catching up on the news while the traditional media slept, quite literally.
Figures due out later this week will confirm that up to half a million people - or 6 per cent of the online population - visited World Cup websites each day of the tournament, boosting visitors to sport sites by as much as 75 per cent.
Lachlan Brahe, general manager, media operations, of online media buyer emitch, says: "I think it will be fair to say that all major publishers will have increased their audience but the most significant thing is that the number of page impressions [how much they viewed] will have also increased."
Brahe says the amount of advertising dollars spent on the medium rose during the tournament but declined to say by how much.
Although the number of Australians going to the web for cup coverage was dwarfed by countries with a more ingrained football culture such as Brazil, Germany and Britain, observers are citing the World Cup as a turning point in consumer behaviour.
When it came to watching videos on the web, anything remotely linked to football was a major drawcard.
Nielsen Net Ratings senior analyst Andrew Eckford says that while the figures might represent "a modest uplift" in the number of people going online, they are likely to be spending longer there and viewing more.
"It's an event that has made for a far more intense visitation and usage of sport and news websites by online consumers," he says. "Longer term I would say that it's making the internet the first point of contact for contemporary events - it's made it the preferred medium for up-to-the minute information."
Nielsen found that while the usual spikes in traffic remained - morning, lunchtime and early evening before people left work - the cup created its own peak hour of late evening.
"If there was no newspaper for 12 hours or nothing on the TV for a couple of hours, people were turning to the web in the lead-up to the game," Eckford says. All the games were played in the early hours of the morning Australian time.
Mobile phone operator Hutchison 3, which had the rights to stream video highlights to its subscribers' handsets, was surprised by the volumes. "What fascinated us is how many people watched it on their phones and for how long - this is while the match was actually taking place in the early hours of the morning," 3 spokeswoman Liz Rex says. "Up to and including the Australia versus Brazil match we had 300,000 streams but then it grew steadily to more than 800,000."
While there was no disputing the dominance of TV - 8.8 million people or 63 per cent of Australia's five capital cities' viewing population tuned into SBS - the web became the home of the football nerd. Minutiae such as player and team statistics, the latest odds, tipping competitions and fantasy team draws all lured more people to the web than other media. It also drew more women and a broader demographic, according to Nielsen's research.
The amount of video streamed from some of the major sites surpassed expectations even though football's governing body, FIFA, restricted what could be broadcast over the net. Yahoo! had a global deal with FIFA to show highlights for the first time in the tournament's history and locally Yahoo!7 negotiated a deal with local football authorities for the Socceroos.
Globally more than 31 million videos of football coverage were streamed from Yahoo! in the first 10 days, the latest figures available. Not that those restrictions seemed to matter; fans snapped up anything that fed the appetite for World Cup fever.
Ninemsn's video diary by a Dutch comic act called Boomchicago and a video diary by a roving reporter pulled in 200,000 video streams, making it into ninemsn's top four video categories for the period.
Andy Mallinson, managing director of online media agency NextX, says: "One of the real winners were peripheral services not directly related to any sponsorship to the World Cup such as BigPond's use of Roy and HG, who didn't directly have World Cup rights but they were able to create compelling content online and on mobiles which people were prepared to download in their droves.
"Are we seeing here the future of sports commentary and sports broadcasting online? Is the web now becoming the place for sport analysis - be it comedic or serious?"
Fairfax Digital ended the tournament with an unprecedented 700,000 views of videos, again relying on anything but live coverage to entertain viewers. Wraps after the games overlaid with live crosses to Sydney Morning Herald reporters and pundits still managed to get 36,361 viewers.
Fairfax Digital's national sales director, Liam Walsh, says that with the Ashes cricket and the English Premier League soccer on the horizon, video is the way to go.
"We will increase our video. There's a real appetite for it and we can do that for the Ashes," he says.
Now media buyers are asking if they can retain that audience.
Walsh believes so. "That audience is only going to grow - they are not going to go away. There are another 6 million people out there who have yet to come online and sport is going to be a growth area."
Given that AFL and NRL still managed to be among the top three sporting websites during the World Cup, it remains to be seen whether soccer will be a one-hit wonder on the web.
"Hopefully the Australian soccer stakeholders can capitalise on this period to further grow interest in the sport," Nielsen's Eckford says.
said...Hi
I was just wondering what the quality of the A-league is like, how goods the football?, how popular is it? and can it become one of the best leagues outside Europe??
whubris said...yeah, it's OK - I'd say lower level Championship to League One quality. It's a good league, at least most people I know enjoyed it. Crowds averaged about 12,000 across the league from what I remember - Qld Roar and Sydney averaged about 14-15,000. Be a few years before it's considered one of the best in the world methinks :-)
