Feature: College Sports Television embraces technology - April 2004  

College Sports Television, the fastest-growing independent cable network in the US, has recently completed its acquisition of the Official College Sports Network (OCSN), which will be re-branded CollegeSports.com. The purchase includes the www.collegesports.com website and its network of 150 official athletic sites for top colleges, universities and athletic associations in the US. Sport and Technology spoke to CSTV about the deal that has been finalised at the end of a very busy 12 months for the network.

At the time of writing, CSTV was not only celebrating its first birthday but also the success of its ëMarch Madnessí offerings, the nickname given to the annual NCAA Menís Basketball Tournament. As well as showcasing programming devoted to basketball, CSTV has also beefed up its college hockey, lacrosse and baseball offerings with college football being a stalwart of its schedule. The network televises regular season and championship event coverage from every major collegiate athletic conference, and televises nine NCAA Championships. In addition, CSTV has a programming and marketing agreement with the US Olympic Committee. CSTV is available to more than 15m homes nationally in the US on cable and satellite through agreements with Time Warner, Adelphia, Insight cable systems and DirecTV among others.
ìWe view ourselves as being a college sports company,î says Chris Bevilacqua, CSTVís executive vice president and former senior executive at Nike, ìand the definitive and authoritative voice of those sports. We believe that technology is the centerpiece to what we do here and is the core to our overall approach. It is critical to remember that the way sports fans consume media now is a lot different to how they did five or 10 years ago.î

Off-campus, on-air and online

Fans of college sports are an attractive demographic for sponsors and advertisers because they fall into the lucrative high-income category. With annual revenue of approximately $11bn, the college sports category is as large as the NBA, NFL and MLB combined. More than 120m people in the US have either graduated from college or attended college, creating a massive, passionate and loyal audience for CSTV programming, both on television and online.
It is the online audience that CSTV has been targeting through its acquisition of the Official College Sports Network (OCSN). ìThe OCSN demographic captures our bullseye viewer perfectly,î explains Bevilacqua, ìthat being 25 to 30 year old males who are college-educated and passionate about sport. Of them, 70% use broadband. We couldnít ask for a better audience than that!î
OCSNís rebranded CollegeSports.com website is a leading online source for US college sports news, information, scores and analysis, generating more than 2bn page views annually. It produces and manages official athletic sites for institutions such as Notre Dame, Ohio State, Miami, Tennessee, Stanford and the Pac-10 and Atlantic Coast Conferences. CollegeSports.com produces the official athletic sites for 28 colleges competing in the NCAA Menís Division I basketball tournament and 30 colleges competing in the NCAA Womenís Division I basketball tournament.

During March Madness and beyond

CollegeSports.com served up in-depth online coverage of the NCAA menís and womenís tournaments as part of CSTVís ë32 Days of Madness, 64 Hours a Dayí initiative in 2004. In addition to exclusive news, information and commentary, CollegeSports.com featured streaming video of tournament post-game press conferences, GameTracker real-time statistics and scores for every tournament game, streaming live audio of select NCAA games and other exclusive broadband content. CollegeSports.com, along with AOL, streamed live audio from CSTVís live Tourney Talk call-in show throughout the NCAA tournaments as well.
Beyond its March Madness activities, CollegeSports.com provides audio and video of games, coachesí shows and press conferences for more than 50 schools through its ëCollege Sports Passí subscription service with RealNetworks. College Sports Pass subscribers have access to more than 2,000 live events, including football, menís and womenís basketball, volleyball, soccer, softball, baseball and other sports. The portal delivers 1,000 collegiate correspondents around the nation with continuously fed news, information and statistics.
CollegeSports.com provides its partner schools, conferences and athletic associations with a full suite of products and services aimed at increasing promotion and revenue. These resources include: Netitor, an industry-leading publishing platform; FanBase, a new customer relationship management system; e-commerce services including online stores, ticketing, auctions (with partner eBay) and fundraising; and extensive advertising sales and support.
ìWe are excited about partnering with schools and conferences that recognize the value of utilising interactive technologies to build and strengthen relationships with alumni, students and fans,î says Brian Bedol, president and CEO of CSTV. ìThe addition of CollegeSports.com to our portfolio, and its broad and deep coverage of intercollegiate athletics, enables us to provide unparalleled value to our distribution, programming and marketing partners.î
At the time of the acquisition, OCSN was a company already generating a ìfair amountî of e-commerce and advertising revenue, according to Bevilacqua. And with CollegeSports.com generating a single-day record of more than 23m page views on Friday, 12 March 2004, as fans logged on for coverage of the conference basketball tournaments, the eyeballs are certainly there for monetising content online. ìThe network of websites not only creates great content,î adds Bevilacqua, ìbut letís not forget that all-important high income, bullseye audience.î

CollegeSports.com key stats

• Attracts more than 8m unique users and more than 220m page views per month
• Ranks #1 among online sports destinations in composition of users with a household income of greater than $150,000
• Ranks #1 among online sports destinations in composition of users with undergraduate and graduate degrees
• More than 72% of users access CollegeSports.com via high-speed connections, compared to the general internet audience average of 44%
• Has more than 325 advertisers, including American Express, AT&T, Discover Card, EA Sports, Forbes, Ford, Microsoft, Nextel, Sony and UPS.

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