Hockey-Reference.com's Play Index

[Hockey Outsider]

I'm not sure if any of you use hockey-reference.com's Play Index. They recently announced that this tool will be moved to a new site, and will be available by subscription only ($8/month for hockey, and $16/month for all sports - I believe those are in USD).

I like that tool - it's accurate and easy to use. But I find nearly $100/year to be steep - especially since NHL.com has finally made some improvements to the stats sections of their website. Hockey-reference.com is definitely better, but I'm not sure if it's that much better that it's worth nearly $100/year.

An FYI in case anyone else uses the site and wants to make use of it before it moves to the subscription model.

Click to read more...

 

[morehockeystats]

Thanks for heads up.
I'm not using them. But I can do whatever they do.

 

[The Panther]

I noticed this, too. Very disappointed. Hockey-Ref is a great site, and much easier and user-friendly than NHL.com.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Pretty foolish of them to wait until after NHL.com started doing something similar for free. I'm not even sure if hockey-reference is any better anymore; NHL.com has some search tools that H-R doesn't.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

maybe i'm just naive but who is the intended user of this service?

i feel like most people who go micro enough to need to use the play index regularly probably have their own data sheets. and the rest of us, as tdmm notes, can just start getting used to nhl.com's interface.

 

[tarheelhockey]

maybe i'm just naive but who is the intended user of this service?

That's what I'm trying to figure out. How big of a market could there possibly be for this?

I would consider myself an advocate for H-R's product and pretty close to a power-user of that tool, given the number of times I reference it for various projects on HF. And I'm not a starving student or a cheapskate... I'll pay for a service if it makes sense. But $100 a year? That's in the range of an Amazon, Netflix, Peloton type subscription. I'm not even going to consider paying that much for a bit of convenience looking up hockey stats.

This was my "nudge" to get familiar with the new NHL.com search tool, which I found instantly satisfactory. So how H-R is losing my ad revenue without gaining a subscription. If people like us are pushing back, who the heck is their target market supposed to be?

 

[Doctor No]

Yeah, I'd like to see what their proposed pro forma looks like for this. One option is that (given how timelines often look here) they started implementing this before the NHL dropped their data, and just decided to roll with it (perhaps to align it with their other sports - my guess is that hockey constitutes a rounding error compared to baseball and football on their books).

I use my own database for goalie stuff, and one thing on my list is to better build out my site to allow for users to query similarly to what I'm able to do under the hood.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Here's the announcement they made about moving to a paywall model:

https://www.sports-reference.com/blog/2020/05/play-index-tools-are-moving-to-stathead-com/

Our Baseball Play Index was always a subscription product, but we never applied that model to the other sports' tools. It was always our intention to charge for these products, but for a variety of reasons that never happened.

The Sports Reference sites have continued to grow in traffic and advertising revenue over that time to the extent that the Play Index and our ad-free options are a very, very small portion of our revenue. Most of that is on us, as we have not done a great job of promoting and marketing tools that are highly valued by a dedicated group of users. The Basketball, Football, Hockey, and College Play Indexes represent well under 1% of our revenue. In addition, the Play Index tools are complicated to maintain and manage, and quite frankly are a money-loser for us at this time. It's well past time for us to re-think how these tools are positioned within our constellation of sites.

While Sports Reference is doing well overall, I'm not comfortable with having so much of our revenue dependent on advertising. We are very beholden to search engines continuing to send us traffic, and likewise the ad market can be fickle and difficult for a small to medium size operator to navigate. With the economic downturn currently taking place, our ad revenue is down significantly as well.

Perhaps they have enough professional users (writers and broadcasters) for this to make sense? Based on their website and twitter mentions, it seems like that's their play.

 

[BHD]

That’s disheartening. H-R kickstarted my interest in the history of the sport.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Here's the announcement they made about moving to a paywall model:

https://www.sports-reference.com/blog/2020/05/play-index-tools-are-moving-to-stathead-com/



Perhaps they have enough professional users (writers and broadcasters) for this to make sense? Based on their website and twitter mentions, it seems like that's their play.

fair enough, everybody gotta eat

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Here's the announcement they made about moving to a paywall model:

https://www.sports-reference.com/blog/2020/05/play-index-tools-are-moving-to-stathead-com/



Perhaps they have enough professional users (writers and broadcasters) for this to make sense? Based on their website and twitter mentions, it seems like that's their play.

That makes sense.

For the record, I'd be willing to pay about $25 a year to continue to use their search index. As I said, it's better than NHL.com's website, but not by a huge amount. I'm not poor, I'm not cheap (my wife may disagree), but I just don't see the value for $100 annually.

 

[Michael Farkas]

I just assumed that they couldn't price hockey out differently than the other sports...so, they just "rounded" us up to $8. Football people - a larger audience I presume - will pay $8 because their tickets are a trillion dollars...hockey people have an option and won't and aren't as large of an audience...there was a slight attempt to cover for this with the "all sports for $16" thing or whatever...

One thing I chatted with an H-R person about not long ago was a "goal finder" in the way that NFL has a play finder.

i.e. all goals where Team is up >3 goals in the 3rd period in the playoffs to find garbage time scorers...things of that nature. NHL doesn't do that, right?

 

[BenchBrawl]

100$ a year? Too expensive for what it is and with the existing alternative. Still sucks though, I liked H-R.

 

[Trap Jesus]

It's a great tool but I can't believe how much they valued it at. Can't think many would be willing to dish out $8 a month for it.

 

[EastCoastFlamesFan]

I'm pretty mixed on this as well. In theory I would support these guys in a second, but that price just seems way too steep. It's a bummer because the site in pretty much impossible to navigate with all the ads now. I did try the free trial and was instantly reminded on how much I love the interface compared to NHL.com. I mean, maybe I would consider $50 a year for the entire sportsreference suite (I've always been a big baseball-ref and basketball-ref user as well).

 

[BenchBrawl]

I don't like to pay too much for my hockey history hobby, but if I'm paying 100$ a year, i'll invest it in a newspapers.com subscription, who gives me access to a vast collection of exclusive material.

 

[overpass]

I just assumed that they couldn't price hockey out differently than the other sports...so, they just "rounded" us up to $8. Football people - a larger audience I presume - will pay $8 because their tickets are a trillion dollars...hockey people have an option and won't and aren't as large of an audience...there was a slight attempt to cover for this with the "all sports for $16" thing or whatever...

One thing I chatted with an H-R person about not long ago was a "goal finder" in the way that NFL has a play finder.

i.e. all goals where Team is up >3 goals in the 3rd period in the playoffs to find garbage time scorers...things of that nature. NHL doesn't do that, right?

I used the free trial for a month and the one thing I really liked that nhl.com doesn't have is their goal finder. You can filter for game-tying goals and points and go-ahead goals and points, and filter by period.