WEF webinar features Matt Kelly - Mirror Football

"That is what we wanted with Mirror Football: to capture the passion of football, which is about anticipation, nostalgia, and reliving the highs and lows of the game," said Kelly.

Exploiting what newspapers have

The strategy relies on exploiting what newspapers have and others do not. "It will always be our unique content, the news, the exclusives, our videos, reaction and our particular take on a given topic that will draw people to our site and keep them coming back. It¹s that unique content that will always set you apart," Kelly said during the WEF webinar, organised with the International Association of Sports Newspapers (IASN) and dedicated to how newspaper companies can increase their revenues from sports coverage.

Since Trinity Mirror launched the stand-alone football site, visitor figures have doubled in a span of five months, and, critically, new revenue streams are flowing in.

Investing in journalists

For the project, the Mirror hired two full-time journalists, eight for six months to concentrate on the launch, and one full-time archivist. "When most newspapers were laying off staff, we were investing in journalists and I think that speaks volumes about the commitment we made," said Kelly.

One main goal of Mirror Football, he said, was to be "home to the greatest football archive on the planet." And with more than 100 years of football photos (20 million) digitised, Mirror Football sat on a potential gold mine, he said.

"We had to present a whole host of products that our consumers could buy from us," he said. The company is selling "tens of thousands" of books and magazines derived from archived content. At £27 each (€31), the new revenue starts to add up.

Kelly said the site is outperforming its financial targets and drawing "massive interest for serious money and clients, especially leading up to the World Cup. This is a part of the audience we never would¹ve drawn as being just a part of the Mirror site."

Kelly spoke in the first of three online seminars, or webinars, organised by WEF and the IASN.

Other webinars

The second webinar, on how to create engaging multimedia and interactive coverage of the FIFA World Cup, will be held on Thursday, 4 March, 2010, at 2pm GMT, and will feature Diego Antonelli, manager of Gazzetta.it, the online site of Italy's sport newspaper, Gazzetta dello Sport.

The third webinar, to be held on 16 March, will be dedicated to understanding the terms of accreditation for covering the World Cup and other sports events, and will feature Andrew Moger, executive director of the News Media Coalition, and Juan Ignacio Gallardo, deputy director of Marca in Spain.

Upcoming World Editors Forum webinars:

• "E-readers and tablets: how to build your news applications for mobile devices," on 30 March;
  
• "New job positions: the community editor - how to interact with social media," on 13 April;
  
• "The news strategy of a pure player : how the Huffington Post achieved success," on 27 April;
  
• "Using editorial outsourcing to reduce costs and keep quality high," on 11 May;
  
• "Crowdsourcing journalism: is there a good business model? The example of Californiawatch," on 27 May

For more details, go to www.editorsweblog.org/webinars.html.