Announcement!
Pro Football Focus now has three complete seasons in the bag.
When we first published our work on the web, our aim was pretty clear: to try and bring an enhanced level of evaluation and discussion to NFL fans everywhere. We were doing things in our spare time, at our own pace, and our publishing schedule could best be described as sparse and haphazard; I think we wrote maybe two-dozen articles in 2009!
But then things started to heat up – our readers who had initially been measured in hundreds became thousands, media began using our information and even NFL teams started using our services. Providing data to our own timescales was no longer good enough and we had to become more professional in order to meet our users expectations. We needed full-time staff and, in order for that to be tenable, we had to pay them something.
In August 2010, with few other options available, we went to subscription only for our main statistics service. I can’t say I was happy at the time (or even in hindsight) but it did allow us to survive and publish an awful lot more free articles. During the 2010 season, and since, we now write twice as many pieces in a week as we did during the whole of 2009. While there was an understandable resentment from some fans at our new charging scheme, demand for our services sky-rocketed in all quarters and our readership moved from thousands to tens of thousands.
When we asked for feedback from our readers at the end of the season, we received an overwhelming response. You told us three things: you wanted more information, you wanted it faster each week, and you wanted it for a lower price. All fair points, and we’re excited to say that we’re addressing all three at once.
If you enjoyed all of the unique stat looks we brought you in recent months – such as the Elusive Rating, Pass Rushing Productivity, and Drop Rate – you’ll be pleased to hear that they’ll no longer just be serving as offseason article fodder. We will be adding a new section for Premium subscribers that will provide all of our Signature Stats, updated each week along with the rest of our data.
In addition, we will be twisting our staff into knots to do it, but we’ll have all of the weekly data posted on the site days earlier than before with the last of it live by Wednesday evenings EST.
Lastly, and most excitingly, because of the success of our subscription program last year along with some other significant developments here at PFF, we are thrilled to be able to offer our Premium service at a much lower rate.
- Effective July 12 we are reducing the yearly subscription from $90 to $29.99 (a huge 66.7% decrease)
- We will also be lowering our monthly subscription from $24 to $9.99 (a 58.4% cut)
And, in case you think as an early adopter you lost out, nothing could be further from the truth:
If you currently have one of our $39 offseason packages we’re going to extend your subscription all the way through the entire 2011 season to the Super Bowl.
If you have supported us by purchasing a $90 package, we’re going to look after you too. Though we will no longer be offering the Player Participation data for sale to the public, we will give those $90 subscribers the player participation for their chosen team for free, and offer them a 33% discount on their next annual subscription (you will pay $19.99, not $29.99) . Without you guys, we would not be here, moving from strength to strength the way we are. We really appreciate you sticking with us and hope you will for many more years.
In summary, we will strive not only to continue to provide the most accurate, insightful and highly regarded information on football available anywhere but we will also forever strive to improve the product we are providing to you guys, our users.
Enjoy the season and take care,
Neil
