Mi9’s ESPN deal a chance to reach non-rugby head sports fans

MSN’s local corporate brand Mi9, the joint venture first launched in 2007 between Microsoft and Nine Entertainment, touts a new deal with sports network ESPN as a chance for advertisers to reach sports fans who want to watch more than just rugby.

“Rugby might be New Zealand’s traditional sporting mainstay, but it’s not the only game in town,” says Mi9’s New Zealand commercial director Dan Robertson. “For example, international football pulls a huge crowd and a decent chunk of Kiwis, who get their fix on ESPN.”

Under the deal, Mi9 will sell premium advertising on ESPN’s websites, including espn.com, footytips.com.au, cricinfo.com, espnfc.com and espnf1.com.

Mi9 says it will boost its behaviour-based ad network Microsoft Media Network (MMN) with another nine million impressions a month by Kiwi visitors to ESPN’s sites. The company says MMN has doubled its impressions to 400 million since it launched last year.

Earlier this year Mi9 added mobile users to MMN.