The year 2020 and all the negative things that came with it is finally over which is a cause for serious celebration. However, before we completely jump into the year 2021, I wanted to point out something that wasn’t so bad about the past year.
When the sports world began to shutdown last March, a lot of bad thoughts went through my head. How were our network of ‘Sports Now‘ websites going to stay a float? On the surface, it seemed near impossible to be able to come up with enough story ideas to generate traffic to keep us profitable.
What I’ve learned since March when the shutdown of sports started is that I was looking at the situation as the cup being half empty instead of half full. Instead of looking back at 2020 as a period to forget, I’m instead going to look at it as a turning point in what we’re working hard to build.
Thanks to some great partners and teammates that worked their asses off, our Sports Now Network took major steps and showed very promising growth in 2020. Here are some of the key numbers that have our team excited heading into 2021.
Pittsburgh Sports Now:
• 1 million unique visitors in 2020 vs. 887k in 2019
• 6.9 million page views in 2020 vs 7.5 million in 2020. On the surface that doesn’t look good, but when you consider we went 6 months without a sporting event and recruiting visits shutdown, which is a big part of our story content, that drop in views isn’t as bad as it could have been.
Pittsburgh Hockey Now:
• 1.9 million unique visitors in 2020 vs. 1.1 million in 2019
• 5.2 million page views in 2020 vs 4.2 million in 2020.
Steelers Now:
• 747k unique visitors in 2020 vs. 146k in 2019
• 1.2 million page views in 2020 vs. 253k in 2019
West Virginia Sports Now:
• 1.3 million page views in 2020vs 706k in 2019
• 411k unique visitors in 2020 vs. 195k in 2019
Pittsburgh Sports Live:
• 820k video views in 2020 vs. 751k in 2019
Pittsburgh Soccer Now:
• 380k page views and 152k unique visitors in 2020
Nittany Sports Now:
• 135k page views and 74k unique visitors in less than four months
• Pittsburgh Racing Now doubled its average per day visitors in 2020 and Pittsburgh Golf Now had a great start and we’re looking forward to their continued growth in 2021.
I’m not going to bore you with more numbers and will just wrap this up by thanking you our readers for staying with us and viewing the material that our sites are producing on a daily basis. I also want to thank all our sponsors over the past year because without your support, ‘Sports Now’ wouldn’t be possible.
Finally, I want to thank all my teammates for all the hard work, time and creativity that you give these sites everyday: Harry Psaros, David Hague, Zac Weiss, Chris Mueller, George Michalowski, Dan Kingerski, Shelly Anderson, Mike Asti, Cale Berger, Nick Farabaugh, Ed Thompson, Cody Nespor, Tom Bragg, Cory Giger, Mitchell Northam, Alan Cole, Matt Gajtka, Mike Darnay, Scott Stiller, John Krysinsky, Ed Rosensteel, Mark Asher Goodman, Rachael Kriger, Matt Popchock and Jordan Smith.
Most importantly, my two partners on all these sites and guys that I speak to on a daily basis that do more to make all of this possible and successful: Alan Saunders and Joe Steigerwald.
You guys are not only great partners but great friends, thank you.
2020 started with a ton of uncertainty for everyone but I feel a ton better about where everything is headed. Enough looking back, it’s time to get to work on making 2021 a great and successful year.
We are quite grateful as well. Thanks so much!