pros and cons of a network of forums?

let's say you are thinking of starting a small group of forums which all fall under a broad category.

for example, four sports forums: baseball, basketball, football, tennis.



what pros and cons would you expect from having a small network of forums instead of a single forum?


*ignore the domain costs

 

Cons, Hosting costs if all of them were to grow very large, lack of time for promotion, promotion motivation dropping possibly, software costs.

Pros, being king of all those forum niches someday

 

An independent baseball.com (as an example) would get ferociously rabid fans discussing the uber details of the sport (hopefully).

A comprehensive ballsports.com would get people that like to discuss more general sports.

A network of baseball.ballsports.com, football.ballsports.com, etc would not to as well. They seem to gather an odd mix of general fans and detailed fans, and a higher % of people that got banned from other sports sites.

At least those are my impressions at the moment. If anyone knows of a successful network of sites please post.

 

hosting costs if they get large/busy? if they get large/busy, there should be a good chance of generating advertising revenue. which should (hopefully) pay for server costs.

software costs, it depends. free forum software is a possibility.

 

I say FULL OF CONS. Too much work to run and control them all. To get them all active and such. Now, if you do what Crowdgather does and just buy them all and have others run them, good for you!

 

What about in this sense: If somebody already owns multiple forums that may be similar or related, and they are already established, would it still be too much work to bring them all together in a single network, to cross-promote them and help spread the traffic?