Running With the Networks: RunnersWorld.com Gets Olympics Love

NBCOlympics, Yahoo, and the usual sporting site suspects aren’t the only beaches on which the Olympics traffic wave hit this month. Rodale’s RunnersWorld.com reports a personal best last week of 5.14 million page views, with Monday running the fastest leg at 885,000 views. The site wisely leveraged its expertise during the second week of the games, which featured track and field events. A blog straight from Beijing gave the site a personal feel, but the RW microsite is a good example of narrowcasting. While the rest of the sports sites struggled to manage masses of sports and stories, this destination gathered the key events into a nice menu of clear clickstreams. There were daily recaps for drive-by viewing and home grown video that offered a different take on the games than the endless streams NBC gushed online. An “Olympics Photos” newsletter and online slideshow helped spike traffic as well. A content partnership with NBCOlympics.com surely helped, but RunnersWorld coverage did stand out for its concision and depth.