Hockey Reference’s Great Sponsorship Model

Hockey-Reference.com does what it says on the box. I don’t think I’d visited the site until James Mirtle wrote about it the other day (I usually go to The Internet Hockey Database if I need to look up a stat).

Hockey-Reference.com just launched this clever sponsorship model, apparently taking after Baseball-Reference.com. You pay a small amount of money to put a text ad on any player, team or coach page on the site. The price varies based on how much traffic the page gets, apparently based on roughly $2.50 for every 1000 page views. I checked out Trevor Linden and Mattias Ohlund–they were both going for $40 a year. Gordie Howe is worth a $100 a year.

I eventually settled on Bret Hedican (great wheels, no hands) for a mere $10 for the year. I chose him because I was going to link to Julie’s figure skating blog, and he’s married to Kristi Yamaguchi.

It’s a clever gimmick, and a great way to raise a little cash for the site publishers.