Sports News Portal

Whether you own a small pizza business or have several locations in your area, you have something that even the big chains can’t compete with. You know your market and have the ability to focus on local sporting events when running advertising campaigns. Direct mailing pizza menus for football games and other sports events in your area generate will massive sales and also keep you in the spotlight as the “go-to-spot” for the big game!

Timing is Everything

Before you even think about how you are going to advertise, and what specials or promos you are going to run on your direct mail pizza menus, the first thing to do is get your hands on a calendar of events in your market area. Just prior to the beginning of each season any given sport at your local schools and universities, specific games with locations will be posted (i.e. home or away). Once you know when and where those games will be held, it is time to sit down to plan direct mail pizza menus to generate sales during those events. The same idea applies to national sports events such as NFL, NBA, or big soccer games. Timing is everything and your menu mailers will need to go out just prior to major sporting events to get the full benefit.

Support Your Home Team – Game Night Specials

One effective use of direct mail pizza menus is to include specials and coupon that are only redeemable on game nights. Some pizza restaurants offer special promotions that can be redeemed if the home team wins, while other pizza shops offer discounts when ticket stubs to the games are provided after the event on game night. Many owners support local teams and a portion of the profit on game nights goes to supporting home teams. Use your direct mail pizza menus to advertise that! Parents and students alike are proud of their home teams, and statistics have proven that they are more likely to patronize businesses that support the home team.

Bulk Discounts for Home Games

Another way to generate massive sales with direct mail pizza menus is to advertise special deals when ordering bulk on game nights. Many parents who run concession stands at home games order two or more dozen pizzas to be sold by the slice to raise money for the team. Those pizzas generally come from the big chains because they offer a discount when ordering in bulk. Maybe you can’t provide quite the same discount that those large corporations can offer, but you can provide much better pizza (which will sell more!) and you can support the home team at the same time. Other successful marketing techniques would include special pricing for after-game or tail-gating parties when ordering a certain quantity pre-established on your menu.

The key to success is to plan direct mail pizza menus with promotions, coupons, and specials just prior to major sporting events in your market area. The ‘big guys’ can’t do that because there are just too many schools and universities to keep up with around the country and they have to get corporate approval for almost all advertisements. By taking advantage of your market knowledge, you can own your local area with very little effort. And, you don’t even need to try to remember to get your mailings out on time! Professional printers can have those mailings scheduled for you and often that pizza menu or flyer can be mailed for less than the price of a postage stamp. Use football and other sports events to keep your name in the spotlight, plus it’s fun!

For daily news sports, different sports channels are providing the best to their regular viewers.
Fox is based in Australia working as a cable and satellite sports news channel. This channel is owned by Premier Media Group and is the sister channel of Fox Sports. Fox runs live news for 19 hours a day, broadcasting live cricket news or any other mega event.

ESPN is a sports channel that features reruns of famous, sporting events, daily news sports, sports documentaries, and sports themed movies. Such programs include biographies of famous sports figures or a rerun of a famous World Series or Super Bowl, often with added commentary on the event.

Now ESPN Classic is the only remaining member of the ESPN family that is not available in high definition due to the majority of its content being vintage footage produced before the days of high definition television Super Sports is a South African leading news provider. It covers events like football, soccer, Wimbledon or live cricket news.

It also covers the sports events in other African countries such as Namibia. Super sports mainly focus on the country’s three most popular sports: rugby union, cricket and soccer.

From Virgin Media Television, Setanta Sports News was a television channel which provides the sports updates. Unbelievable, all Virgin Media customers can watch this channel free on satellite and online. These days real time events and coverage is getting more and more popularity as media organizations are facilitating the sports hungry viewers by feeding them with latest sports groove.

Similarly, the internet has a wealth of information on the world famous players, hot teams and gossips about latest sporting events. In fact, there is a huge number of websites dedicated to sports. If you are looking for your favorite sports pictures then you are in luck. Even just a quick search in Google images will reveal a considerable quantity of images you want.

Sports lovers are always thirsty about the latest on their favorite hot team and its players. Now at this time it’s the responsibility of the sports channels to sneak into the sporting arenas for the latest interviews with players and training staff, while on the move, sports teams provide appropriate info support, as reporting is not away from them.

Latest sports news coverage is easier in big and well publicized events and club sports such as football, ice hockey, basketball and baseball where the commercial relationship between news coverage and increased ticket, merchandise, or advertising sales, is better understood.

Instead of typical coverage of ordinary and some of the special news, sports coverage has grown in importance as sport has grown in wealth and professionalism. The importance of latest sports content can be determined as day to day viewership. Most of the sports viewers take much interest in the online coverage of the latest sports events.

In the last century, the growing popularity of sport events and its impact as a global business and the huge amounts of money involved in the staging of mega events like Olympic Games and football World Cup has also attracted the attention a huge number of sports viewers. The direction of any sports news channel to provide the first hand information on all the current sports.

There are literally thousands of places on the web to get your sports news information. Whether you want the latest headlines, up to the second scores, editorials, or in depth analysis, there are a myriad of choices for you. While some sites only offer one or two of those things, there are several that offer all of those and more. My Top 5 are below:

5. Yahoo! Sports (sports.yahoo.com) – this site is all substance and no flash. It looks essentially the same as it did five years ago. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it just doesn’t knock your socks off. Any information that you need is readily available and up to date. Columnists aren’t as well known as the top sites, but they are solid.

4. FOX Sports (msn.foxsports.com) – a few years ago this site was a mess. It was the anti-Yahoo! – all flash and no substance. In the past few years they’ve toned down the flash and increased the substance. The live gamecasts at the top of the page are extremely innovative. For example, for a baseball game you not only see the score, but also an overview of the diamond and what runners are on base. If you are interested in a specific game you can roll your mouse over it and get more details. If FOX keeps innovating like that, they won’t be number 4 for long.

3. Sports Illustrated (sportsillustrated.cnn.com) – this site excels in two things – editorials and rumors. They have THE best writers (they are Sports Illustrated after all) and they do an excellent job of providing tons of content. Peter King’s Monday Morning Quarterback column is absolutely priceless. They also compile a ‘Truth and Rumors’ section for each of the major sports. It’s essentially a compilation of all of the rumors from local newspapers across the country. The best part about it is it’s free, unlike ESPN’s rumors.

2. CBS SportsLine (cbs.sportsline.com) – everything is great about SportsLine – they are often the first to break news, gamecasts are innovative and effective, and for what it’s worth the fantasy sports are the best on the web. Well, they are great at everything except editorials and analysis, and they are horrible at that. Tony Mejia, Dennis Dodd, Pete Prisco, and Greg Doyle are the worst group of sports writers on the web. Where are the editorials from their on-air personalities like Jim Nantz and Billy Packer? ESPN and FOX manage to get their on-air personalities to write, maybe CBS should consider it. Read the comments at the bottom of any article by any of the aforementioned writers and you’ll realize that I’m not the only one that thinks they are horrible.

1. ESPN (www.espn.com) – they are consistently ahead of the curve in every one of the important aspects. They are the worldwide leader in sports and they show no signs of giving up that crown on the web. I commend them for getting their best personalities – John Clayton, Steven A. Smith, Barry Melrose, and Peter Gammons – to write consistently good articles. The only downside is that too much information is hidden in the ‘Insider’, ESPN’s paid service. It’s frustrating to read a headline, click, and then realize that you can’t read the story because you have to pay for it.

There are a great many moments in sports history that cause impassioned arguments about what really happened or what should have happened. When emotions run high, it is easy for some to slide over the line into improper behavior. Any attempt to list sports controversies will immediately hit the issue of definition. Is the O.J. Simpson trial a sports controversy because Simpson was a famous athlete? Should we restrict our list to events that directly impacted sports, such as the Pete Rose blackball, or should we be even more restrictive and stick to events that occurred specifically on the playing field, like Joe Horn’s cell phone call?

It would be easy to let any such list, no matter how restrictive, grow like a weed. However, here are a few of the more interesting controversies.

In the synchronized swimming event in the 1992 Olympics, Sylvie Frechette of Canada and Kristin Babb-Sprague of the US were favored. Over a series of events, scoring was close, but Ana Maria da Silviera of Brazil pushed the wrong button during one event, giving Frechette an 8.7 for a spin. Despite attempts to get this corrected, the score was displayed as it was, and under Olympic rules could not be changed. This was enough to ensure that Babb-Sprague won the gold medal. Later, a ruling gave both women the rights to wear a gold medal from this event. It is hard to beat an event where the judge herself says she was wrong.

Another interesting controversy was the 1960 Olympics 100M freestyle. Lance Larsen of the US appeared to beat John Devitt of Australia to viewers, but the time said Devitt won by a tenth of a second. Six judges for the event split, three each picking Devitt and Lance as the winner. The chief judge selected Devitt and four years of appeals had no effect.

The 1908 Olympic marathon is high on the poignancy list, as Dorando Pietri was the first runner to reach the stadium. He was dazed, and ran in the wrong direction. Officials corrected him, but he collapsed. He rose and fell many times before worried officials, fearing a death in front of the Queen, helped him cross the line. For receiving help to cross the line, he was disqualified.

Stella Walsh, a runner competing for Poland, wins a special note for the bizarre. She ran the 100m sprint and broke three world records. In 1936, an American, Helen Stephens, won the race. Despite allegations that Stephens was a man, examination showed she was female and she was allowed to keep the gold. In 1980, Walsh, who had moved to the US, was shot to death in a robbery. An autopsy showed that Stella Walsh was a man.

However, when shorn of the glow of the immediate events, and searching for the greatest sports controversies of the modern age, the winner must be the 1972 Olympic Basketball scandal. The US dominated Olympic basketball with a string of 62 straight victories, until the 1972 game. The seasoned Soviet team was ahead until three seconds were left on the clock, and the US team was able to take the 50-49 lead. The Soviet coach called for a time out, but the clock was allowed to run to one second and the US players celebrated victory. The clock was stopped at one second because the Soviet coach had called for a time out, and with one second left, the Soviet team was allowed the ball and play continued until the time ran out. The US team again celebrated, but R. William Jones, a British sports official, ruled that play would again resume with three seconds on the clock. This time the Soviet team was able to score, and play was stopped. The US appealed the odd refereeing, but the five judge panel had three communist judges, who all voted to keep the Soviet win.

Every year there are 1,000′s of events that make the landscape each year. Year after year sporting events will transform the landscape for many. These top sporting events are only part that make each year so special.

The beginning of 2009 started off like every year with New Years. No New Years will ever start until the ball drops at Time Square in New York City. As the ball drops from the flagpole on top of Time’s Square one million people gathered around to celebrate the year. It estimated that over a billion people across the globe watched this year as they celebrated the New Year.

The first major event of the year was the Super Bowl on February 1, 2009. The eyes of the world focused on Tampa Florida as the world’s best that year squared off on the gridiron. This year those two teams were Arizona and Pittsburgh. Unlike most years this game went down to the final minutes. In the end Pittsburgh won on a play that will make all participants famous forever.

After the Super Bowl all eyes focused on the NCAA College Basketball season. The year of 2009 saw many teams trade of the number one ranking in the land. North Caroline was the early season favorite but fought with UConn, Louisville and others to keep the title of number one. The tournament took off this year with everyone filling out their brackets including President Obama. The NCAA Tournament might have not have had the thrillers in the past but a Cinderella was born. Michigan State dashed through the tournament heading home to Michigan for the Final Four. The nation got behind Michigan State and the struggling state of Michigan as they reached the Final Four. Ending up in the final North Carolina and Michigan State provided the buzz everyone expects each year. In the end Michigan State could not hold of the North Carolina onslaught providing the favorite to will it all this year.

The 2009 calendar has been eventful during the first quarter of the year. There is more to come from the sporting world this year. In April we will see Tiger’s return to the Masters to keep us going. Augusta for most is the best place in the world for golf. This year with Tiger Wood’s return to golf all eyes will even be more fixed on Augusta to see what happens.

Also in April will be the start of the NBA Playoffs and NHL Playoffs. Each provides drama like no other playoff tournament can. Both involve struggles of seven game series were stars become legends in each sport. Both sports have stars looking to take the next level. In the NBA can Lebron win a ring? Over in the NHL two great young starts are still looking for their first Stanley Cup. Will Sydney Crosby or Alexander Ovechkin engrave their name on the Cup?

As summer comes upon us Europe and America’s favorite sports come enter the spotlight. In the United States we see baseball starting. No other sport in America has as much tradition as baseball in the country. In Europe the start of summer brings in the end of the Union of European Football Association season. On May 20, 2009 we will see the final of the UEFA in Istanbul this year. Then on May 27, 2009 the season concludes with the Final Champions League in Rome.

In June the world will turn to Wimbledon to focus on Tennis. While other majors exist Wimbledon is the one that still captures the world’s imagination.

In 2009 we wait and see the British Open and US Open to satisfy are golf taste. We will also be met by new NFL and college football seasons. With the World Series still out there after the conclusion of the World Baseball Classic we will have a new debate on the best baseball in the world. 2009 has many events past and to come that will be marked down forever.