When I watch sports, I'm really thinking hooters - big, beautiful, gravity-defying mamms that perfectly epitomize sport as a lifelong sexual pastime. I may root for the Knicks, but I hoot for the Knicks' cheerleaders. And I'm not ashamed. Sports and sex - like soup and sandwiches, booze and cigarettes, Sinatra and the Strip - are made for each other.
How else is one to account for the almost immediate popularity of All Nude Sports (
That's a whole lot of die-hard hard-ons, sports fans.
"Fortunately, this is just one of those sites that people click on and then send the page to a buddy," Ziel recently told
"We wanted to hit the heart of the American male market," continues Ziel, attempting to explain the magic formula. "18 to 54 years old, college-educated, with a good income - the people who are a blend of two markets; the first being the adult market, the second being the casino and sports-booking market. What we came up with was a concept that allowed us to exploit the creation of original content, and then serve that content out using broadband media technology. It's a free site, and we have no intention of ever making it a membership site. As far as the business model goes, we fund the operation completely through advertising revenue."
It sounds simple, and actually the presentation couldn't be more so. Type in the URL, and the home page loads quickly. It sports a center console surrounded by mostly sex site and casino ads and a navigation bar to the left. Click on your bandwidth speed and, in no time at all, you're viewing the daily segment. Posted at 2 p.m. EST, the taped and archived segments include sports headlines, scores, and a few short sketch comedy bits, with an average running time of 15 to 17 minutes, depending on how much news is available and what skits they feel will work that particular day.
The girls are young and cute, of course, and for the most part obvious novices to on-air reading, but unlike the other naked headline news sites that have popped up in the last few years, these
According to Ziel, the gradual peeling off of clothes wasn't even considered. "Never. In my opinion; and in the opinion of the other people involved in the show, dragging out the obvious serves no purpose. But also, we don't take ourselves that seriously. We're doing this to make money and have a good time while creating content. That's one of the main differences between, say,
But if light-hearted fun is the order of the day at All Nude Sports, the gaming behind the games is a decidedly more serious business. The third essential prong of the All Nude Sports business plan is casinos, an industry that lives and dies by numbers. "In January, we had about 200,000 impressions a day," says Ziel. "A site that's getting that kind of traffic has hit a mass market, and casinos thrive on one thing and one thing only, the law of large numbers. When they are able to get their advertisements in front of hundreds of thousands of people every day, those advertisements are sending people right to them."
If sports, sex, and gambling are such a killer combination, why hasn't anyone tried to exploit them before? In fact, they have, says Ziel, but failed because their expectations were too high. His plan is to develop the site slowly, surely, and ambitiously. "All Nude Sports is really the first channel in what I hope will become the All Nude Broadcasting Network," he says, "where we serve up content to a variety of targeted or focused groups of people. For instance, a male-branded show would definitely hit into those markets. The possibilities are limitless: weather, NASCAR, wrestling, movie reviews. In fact, we're getting ready to do a deal with Mr. Skin, to do a weekly movie review sponsored by Mr. Skin, and in exchange he's going to put an All Nude Sports video console inside his site."
Convergence - a worn word not often heard around these parts anymore - is also a big part of Ziel's plans. "I think it all fits right in with the general industry movement. Porn drives the rest of technology, and we think it's great to be on the driving front edge of convergence. We want to broadcast shows that fit within cable and digital distribution guidelines, though in order to do that, one of the first things that we need to do is expand the length of the broadcast."
Contrary to popular opinion that convergence has suffered a setback due to the dotcom bust, the recession, and September's terrorist attacks, Ziel contends that its realization is in fact closer than ever, in part
If so, All Nude Sports considers itself nicely situated to take advantage of such a future, recession or no recession. "We're going to survive just fine," says Ziel. "The advertising revenue is coming in and All Nude Sports is going to be around for a good long time."
One wonders then if mainstream advertisers can be far behind. "No," says Ziel, "I don't see Oprah's book club signing on, or Coca-Cola, but perhaps someone like an Amazon, or maybe some beer company. I've been in touch with a couple of companies that have expressed interest on certain levels, but there are also obstacles inside these companies, at the executive level, where they wonder if they really want to be associated with something like this."
Then what about some professional sports teams getting involved with interviews and locker room access? Ziel just laughs at the idea. "I would love that to happen, but I don't see it. Now, if somebody from any of the major sports outfits or operations would like to call me, I'd be happy to talk, but it would be on the condition that the interviews are done with a nude interviewer." Well, yeah. Can anyone imagine an Oakland Raiders player turning down the chance to be interviewed by one of All Nude Sports' Honey Baked Hams?
Not in this lifetime.
becauseof 9/11. "Yes, it's one of the things that will drive convergence faster, in my opinion. When you think about the applications for things like video conferencing and remote access, those technologies are going to be among the first things that are developed, even for consumers, and even if they're at the tail end of it."
Naked News and us. Naked News takes itself too seriously; their girls are trying to deliver straight news! Also, if you've seen Naked Newsonce, you've seen it every time, because it's the same thing every day."
jeunes fillesare not required to strip tease. Barely a sentence into their segments, most are completely undressed and some even appear butt naked from the get go. The rest of the time is spent stumbling over scores and the inevitable report of an athlete's drug arrest as they stroke their bodies, tweak their nipples, and give themselves the occasional slap on the rear. If the delivery needs improvement, the structure is sound.
AVN Online. "But besides word of mouth, we've already gotten national and international press coverage. Fox TV did a thing on us a while back, and we've been on several nationally syndicated radio shows. It's all helped to create the phenomenon."
www.allnudesports.com), a new Website whose time is apparently here? Launched in Oct. 2001, All Nude Sports is the latest offering by Charlotte, N.C.-based AEBN, Inc. (Adult Entertainment Broadcast Network; www.aebn.com), a streaming video pay-per-view provider that boasts an affiliate network of more than 4,000 Webmasters. In December, the company issued a press release saying that during its first week of broadcasting, traffic to the site increased an average of 1,000 percent each day, "from just over 9,000 its first day to over 150,000 by the end of the week." Since then, according to Brad Ziel, managing director of AEBN and executive producer of All Nude Sports, traffic has shot up to somewhere around 6.2 million impressions a month.
