skysports.com (sky.com/sports/home/)

Member Name: thespurs

Product:	sky.com/sports/home/
Date:	02/08/04 (290 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: See review

Disadvantages: See review

INTRODUCTION

I always click onto skysports.com when I get in from school or being out, mainly to check up on the latest football news. I check on the latest scores from English football and other leagues around the world. I also like to check up on the latest transfer speculation. I thought I would tell the users of dooyoo about this great site so that many others will make the most of this great site.

BREAKING NEWS
If you want to stay in touch with the very latest news from the world of sport, you need go no further than skysports.com. They often break sports news before any other news agency in the country, or world. They have a huge network of reporters around the world and within the UK. This allows you, the viewer/reader, to get the news before anybody else.

EXPERTS

Sky employs the best sport journalists and experts in the business. They give their expert opinions on the latest developments in the sporting world. Those such as Andy Gray who is regarded by many as the best football anylyst. The 'cricket team' includes world class former test cricketers Ian Botham and David Gower. When you read the views of an expert or sporting legend, you know that what they are saying, is based on a huge amount of their experience. They are also very unbiased in their opinions, so that you the reader get the best view point.

COVERAGE

skysports.com offers the best coverage on a wide variety of sports. From the home page there are links to sections regarding the following sports: football, cricket, rugby union, rugby league, golf, tennis, formula 1, speedway, superbikes, horse racing, snooker, darts and NFL. All of the mainstream sports are covered here, many in great detail some less so. Football tends to be the more dominant sport on the site with cricket and rugby union not far behind. This does reflect the culture of sport in the United Kingdom. The majority sports getting more extensive coverage is very logi
cal.

As Sky is such a huge company, with vasts amounts of funding, it has a certain amount of power. They offer exclusives on certain events and get the first interviews from the key players and coaches. They cover events which only they have rights for, so the website will be the only place that you can get up to the minute information on the current event. They do run live scoreboards on every sport and they include written commentry on them. In a football match, for example, the page is updated every couple of minutes.

SEARCH FACILITY

The search facility, can be found towards the top left hand corner of the page and is labelled, 'search'. It is very good on the whole and it can cope when you type in more that one word at a time. It lists the 100 top results in the date order of when they were first released, the latest one appears at the top of the list. The first 25 results appear after searching and the next 75 are found in 3 further blocks of 25, by clicking 'next' at the bottom of the page. Beside each item is the level of 'relevancy'. This indicates the level of match between what you searched for and the article itself. This is helpful because it gives you all of the articles, but you can disregard those with a low relevancy.

SITE EXTRAS

There are a wide variety extras offered by skysports.com. You are able to subscribe to text alerts, play fantasy games and view the latest picture galleries. All of these functions are that great because they aren't really something that the site was designed to specialise in. For example, you should do fantasy football in the The Telegraph instead. You also have a link to the skysports.com betting partner skybet. Here, you are able to place bets on the latest sporting action taking place around the world. There is often the opportunity to cast a vote on a topical issue if you feel the need.

ADVERTISING

There does tend to be a lot o
f advertising on the site with pop-up's often appearing. There are also adverts along the top and down the right hand side but they aren't too much of a problem.

PRESENTATION

The site isn't the tidiest and most structured, especially the homepage. It does appear at times a jumble of pictures and text, which does make it a little confusing. However, each of the categories along the left hand side are clearly labelled and these often lead you towards the stories you are looking for. Most of the content on the site is 'linked' so you can click on various words, e.g. Tottenham, and you will be taken to the Tottenham section of the site. The older stories don't have pictures by them and go into a list which is annoying and awkward to read - I often don't read anything here.

OVERALL ASSESSMENT

I would most certainly reccomend that any dedicated sports fan check here first for the latest sports news. You can be sure of finding reliable and up-to-date stories. You will always be in touch with everything that is big in the world of sport. The other sports websites generally lift their stories from skysports.com anyway. So, go and visit now and see what you think!

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