Kyle
Monday our friends at St. Louis based sports social networking startup announced a new partnership with one of the most recognized sports brands in the world. USA Today Sports is now partnering with LockerDome by adding their content within the USA Today network and also partnering to sell advertising on the site that’s growing at a tremendous rate. LockerDome is one of the hottest startups in St. Louis.
LockerDome has over 1450 networks of professional athletes, sports teams, brands and other sports properties. FL superstars Troy Polamalu, Larry Fitzgerald, Maurice Jones-Drew, Antonio Brown and Marshawn Lynch; MLB All-Star Felix Hernandez; baseball legends Pete Rose and Wade Boggs; and NBA stars Blake Griffin, Rudy Gay, David Lee and Stephen Curry, are just some of the professional sports players that have pages on LockerDome.
Since launch LockerDome, which is backed by Square co-founder Jim McKelvey and other major investors in the St. Louis community, has grown to over 8 million monthly unique visitors. They are currently growing at a rate of more than 100,000 uniques per day.
Under the partnership, effective immediately, USA TODAY Sports Digital Properties will begin selling advertising on LockerDome, and LockerDome’s traffic will now be included within the USA Today Sports Properties network. Additional 2013 strategic initiatives between the two properties are currently being planned.
“By delivering an innovative platform for publishers, LockerDome has quickly become the fastest growing sports website in the world,” said Gabe Lozano, co-founder and CEO, LockerDome. “USA TODAY Sports is a top-tier media brand that we’ve always had a great amount of respect for, and becoming an Official Partner of USA TODAY Sports is a fantastic marriage between two world-class companies that opens up a number of exciting growth opportunities across the board,”
“We’re excited to welcome LockerDome to the USA TODAY Sports family,” said Clay Walker, Vice President of Affiliate Relations for USA TODAY Sports Digital Properties. “LockerDome’s unique social media platform enables us to provide our advertisers with engaged, highly targeted audiences inside LockerDome’s vast—and growing– ecosystem.”
What sets LockerDome apart for publishers is its ability to reach a more engaged, targeted sports audience and increase their overall social media footprint. Since its initial launch, LockerDome has delivered 50% average growth across Facebook and Twitter for its properties in their first 4.5 months. One of its key differentiators is LockerDome’s cross-promotional flexibility, allowing its networks to grow their existing audiences with each other, a service Facebook and Twitter do not currently offer. While contests on other platforms traditionally average the industry standard of 2% – 3%, LockerDome boasts an average landing page conversion of 23%.
Sports enthusiasts join LockerDome to become a part of interest-specific sports communities where they can consume content and interact with like-minded fans around their favorite professional athletes, teams and sports. Milestones for LockerDome since its launch in January 2012 include surpassing one million uniques in June, two million in October, three million in November, four million in December and eight million in January. At its current growth rate, LockerDome is on pace to be a top-10 most visited sports site in the next 12 months.
