Is there any current information on the number of US Chess Magazines and TLA hits? This is in reference if a coorporation would like to sponsor a tournament as a way of advertisement hits and if it would be cost effective.
Well, the January issue of Chess Life went to 44,779 individuals (members, affiliates, subscribers, etc), February went to 49,627, March to 44,301 and April to 49,858, if that helps. (Even numbered months also go to Youth members, which is why those months are higher than odd numbered months.)
TLA hits for individual tournaments are a little harder to measure, because of the way those pages are stored and rendered.
Thanks Nolan!
Are there any Chess Life subscribers who aren’t members of some sort?
Alex Relyea
In all honesty, except for a handful of events (like the spring nationals), most of the bang that a sponsor is likely to get is going to be from your local promotional efforts. Even then, the impact on sales is probably going to be minimal.
I think that’s why most sponsorships tend to be viewed by the sponsor as ‘civic contributions’ rather than as ‘advertising’.
I think the best example of a true partnership in a local sponsorship that I ever arranged was when a local Arby’s restaurant let us use their party room for weekly tournaments on Sunday afternoons.
I also got them to give us a ‘2 for 1’ coupon that we printed in the tournament flyer that we handed out at other tournaments. I think it ran in the state magazine once or twice, too.
The coupon was good at all Lincoln outlets. I got a periodic report back from Arby’s on how many coupons had been redeemed, about half of them came from the restaurant hosting the tournaments, most of those on the day of the week that the tournaments were being held, but the other half came from other locations around town.
The store manager was disappointed when the franchise owner decided to remodel that outlet and eliminated the separate party room, at which time we discontinued the events.
Yes, there are around 900 subscribers, mostly libraries. (I think there are a few dentist’s and doctor’s offices in there, too.)
Our company advertises nationally and has a large local presence. If they use that to advertise, i figure it’s worth a shot, even if most of that money will probably be returned.
I was just curious how many people would view a TLA versus what they spend nationally. Different market, but worth a shot to help bankroll a tournament.
The problem with tracking viewing of online TLAs is that we still don’t have most of them in the searchable Online TLA Service area. (On my more pessimistic days, I doubt that we ever will.)
It’s possible to see the TLAs from Chess Life (in coded format), but because that’s organized by state unless there is only one TLA in a state there’s no way to track which specific TLA someone looked at.
Whether more players use online TLAs or print TLAs is hard to measure. A survey here, for example, would not reflect the habits of those who aren’t web-enabled, and it is also questionable as to whether the 400 or so participants in the forums are a reasonable sample of those who are web-enabled.