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Baseball-Reference.com Sponsorships

Your Sponsorship Account | Sponsorships Overview | Sign-Up for an Account | Sponsorship Renewals

Common Questions below

Baseball-Reference.com relies on a combination direct user support and banner advertising (which we try to keep to a reasonable levels) to pay the bills and support the work going on here. Your support can go directly to specific pages of content. It is our way to both recognize you for your support and also allow businesses to receive something in return for support they provide to the site.

How to sponsor a page

In order to sponsor a page, you need to:

    Short Version
  1. Get a membership account.
  2. Go to the page you wish to sponsor and click on the "sponsor" link in the colored box. For multiple sponsorships, see below.
  3. We will walk you through how to make a payment and how to set up your message.
  4. Pending our approval of your message (usually within 24 hours), your sponsorship will then appear on the site.
  5. If you want to sponsor multiple pages using a single payment, total the price of the pages and send a single payment.
    Long Version
  1. Sign up for a membership with Baseball-Reference.com and Sports-Reference.com. It is free and quick. You are logged in automatically after creating an account and cookies allow you to be recognized when you return to the site.
  2. On each page that accepts sponsorships, there will either be a colored box containing sponsorship message or a colored box stating the page is available. To sponsor an available page you need to click on "sponsor" within the colored box.
  3. We will then step you through the sponsorship process.
    1. How to add funds to your account, if needed
    2. Confirm your intent to sponsor the page, and
    3. Enter a new or choose an existing message for your sponsorship.
  4. We accept payments in a variety of ways and mainly through trusted third parties like PayPal or Amazon. When sending money, please sign up for an account first. We can then easily credit your account immediately for a payment.
  5. If you created a new entry, we will read it and approve it, and then your sponsorship will appear. Please note the approval process may take a day or two if traffic is especially heavy.

Privacy Policy

Why we are doing this?

The Baseball-Reference.com sponsorship system

  1. recognizes in a fun and interesting way those who have generously contributed to the site,
  2. encourages people to contribute to the production of this site, and
  3. allows advertising on the site in an effective way that does not infuriate our users.

Common Questions

Can I reserve a yet to debut player?

No, we get many such requests and are not able to honor any of them. New debut pages become available the day after their debut at between 6am and 7am when the site updates. The price is set at a high price and then drops $5-$10 per day until it hits $20.

What pages can I sponsor?

What is an entry?

An entry is the text that appears on a page or set of pages you sponsor. You can have different entries for different pages or the same entry for everything. You can also edit entries or change which entries you use on different pages.

Example Entry

Entering These Values:

Link Title (up to 50 characters)
Link URL (up to 255 characters, leave blank if not needed)
Message (up to 255 characters)

Would produce

Baseball Primer sponsors this page at Baseball-Reference.

You can sponsor a page.
        The best source for baseball analysis and up-to-the minute baseball discussions.

Can we put anything into an entry?

Yes and no. Entries don't have to point to another website. They could just be a fan sponsoring their favorite player, or the entries can point to any (non-porn, non-offensive) website within our guidelines. You can put any type of message that fits our guidelines. All entries will be screened before appearing on the site and we reserve the right to reject any entry for any reason. We will, of course, refund your money if an appropriate entry can't be found.

Why don't my entries appear immediately?

As a matter of policy, I approve all entries before they appear on the site. This is true of new entries or entries that you have edited. I try to do this as often as possible, so there will be little lag between your creation of an entry and its appearance on the site. But on occasion I may be away from my computer for a few days, so it could take some time before your sponsorship appears on the site. To account for this the sponsorship's expiration date for new sponsorships is extended for an extra seven days in all cases.

How much does it cost?

The price to sponsor a page (or set of pages) depends directly on the popularity of the page. There are many pages available for $2 or $5 (the minimum prices).

Why different prices?

The prices are roughly set to match an advertising rate of $1.25 per 1,000 page views with a minimum charge of $5. Over 14,000 of the total 18,000 pages are at $5 with another 3,500 at $10. From there it goes up to more than $300/year (or more) for Barry Bonds. I feel getting your name on Sandy Koufax's page should be reserved for the largest sponsors.

Can I advertise a website or product this way?

Yes, you may, but the guidelines apply.

If my player pulls a nutty and belts an umpire, can I switch in mid-year?

Generally, we will not allow switching, but you can e-mail us if a special case comes up.

Can I have this page every year?

Yes, you will be given the option to renew a page before anyone else gets a shot. It is, however, possible that a page's cost could change as the page becomes more popular. Server expenses go up as the site becomes more popular. Sponsorship Renewals Policy.

Are you getting rich off this?

Depends on what you consider rich. No yachts, vacation homes, or Mercedes at Sports Reference headquarters, but we're doing all right with the site. The site has done well enough, that it now supports two full-time employees, including myself (Sean Forman). It has also enabled us to spend a lot more money on adding new data, new features and improving the site. Sponsorships are a big piece of the revenue pie, but page advertising is probably going to pass it in 2008 and we have some other ideas for products that people may enjoy.

Why do some of the pages have no sponsorship info listed on them? (No sponsorship is shown, but I can't sign up for them.)

These pages have been chosen by someone, but we have not yet approved their entry. This will usually take one or two days at the most.

A question not answered here or unclear? Please e-mail any questions or comments you might have.