Networking

John Skilton, AS '83, doesn't play his trumpet much these days. A high school music appreciation teacher for a dozen years, Skilton has parlayed a passion for baseball and a knack for developing Internet sites into a prospering business venture.

His five-year old Internet content company, Skiltech Web Services, is recognized as the leading web design firm for minor league baseball franchises. Basking in the glow of his computer screen late in the evenings in 1995, Skilton created his first web site for the Wilmington Blue Rocks, while working as a teacher at McKean High School in Wilmington, Del. Today, he designs and maintains Internet sites for 25 minor league teams as well as a handful of minor league soccer and hockey clubs.

While much of the business world has found its way to the web over the last several years, many sports teams are just heading up the ramp and catching on to the rewards of utilizing the Internet as a marketing tool.

"The Internet is the front end of the interactive age," says Skilton. "It's the merging of the television, the telephone and the computer, and sports is the dead-on product of this exploding technology."

The range of web site services and marketing opportunities offered is as varied as the sports themselves. Teams can sell game tickets, hawk sponsorship space, market massive amounts of merchandise locally, nationally and around the world, pump up their fan base, showcase players and coaches in chat room sessions, call up video highlights, deliver live in-game stats and even air real-time broadcasts from their web sites. It's just a double click away.

According to Skilton, last summer, American City Studios paid $3 million to run the New York Yankees web site for three years. In return, the firm is authorized to sell advertising and collect all merchandising revenues.

"That's kind of the Holy Grail of web marketing opportunities," says Skilton. "With secondary sports teams, you are dealing with a regional market, where fans can walk up and get a ticket or team merchandise. Still, you are going to see minor league and small college sports Internet revenue streams grow over time. Right now, out-of-town sales of minor league hats and logo balls are greater on the Internet than by mail order or phone. Teams can capture that impulse buy 24 hours a day."

For the local sports entities, the Internet today is all about expanding the fan following. It's the ultimate in direct marketing and it doesn't cost the teams anything.

"It really gives us a much more interactive relationship with our fans," explains Doug Stewart, the Blue Rocks marketing director. "We get feedback on our promotions and improvements we've made to the ballpark. We do chat room sessions on Saturday afternoons with the players that get a good response. It's a round-the-clock resource that gives us e-mails late in the evening when our office is closed."

In 1998, the Blue Rocks' site was saluted as minor league baseball's "Web Site of the Year." So, what's Skilton's advice for attracting people to sites and keeping them there?

"Keep it current," he insists. "There's nothing worse than going to a site and seeing the same stale information as last week. I tell teams to look at the value of awareness. Concentrate on passing along updated, accurate information to their customers rather than trying to figure out how they can double what they invested in setting up their site."

When he first started, Skilton looked at designing web sites as merely a hobby, as he taught himself about the technology. Today, working with a staff of five part-time employees, Skilton spends upwards of 15 hours a day (in-season) creating and fine-tuning sports team web sites. They receive updated information from the teams and weave it into their sites. He charges anywhere from a bare bones $1,500 to upwards of $6,000 to develop and maintain a site annually.

Back in 1995, Skilton says there were only about a hundred sites dedicated to baseball. As part of his learning process, he created [baseball-links.com]. Today, it displays 22 main categories and 250 sub-categories, everything from Little League baseball and Negro Leagues to the history of the sport and baseball in other countries. It's been referred to as the "Yahoo" of baseball sites and has been featured in such prominent publications as The Wall Street Journal.

While he admits the hours are long, Skilton says his work is rewarding.

"It's the nature of any small business," Skilton reflects. "You stick at it and it eventually begins to pay off. The first year was rough, but I don't regret the change in careers at all. I can't remember the last time I played my trumpet, but I do keep my hand in by playing the organ at church."

--Terry Conway