COLLEGESPORTS.COM ADDS THE BIG TEN, COLUMBIA, MAINE, WEST COAST CONFERENCE, AMERICAN, FURMAN AND CENTRAL CONNECTICUT STATE TO ITS ROSTER OF OFFICIAL A
NEW YORK, June 14, 2004 - CollegeSports.com, the business unit of CSTV: College Sports Television which produces the www.collegesports.com Web site and its network of more than 150 official athletic sites of colleges and athletic conferences and associations, has added several schools and athletic conferences to its roster of official athletic sites, while renewing partnerships with numerous other schools and conferences.
Schools and athletic conferences whose official athletic sites will now be produced by CollegeSports.com are the Big Ten and West Coast Conferences, Maine, Columbia, American, Furman and Central Connecticut State. In addition, North Carolina, the Pac-10, Rhode Island, Central Michigan, Loyola Marymount, Patriot League, Toledo and Charlotte have renewed their partnerships with CollegeSports.com, as have Akron, Florida Atlantic, Bucknell and Stephen F. Austin.
"The integrated resources of College Sports TV and CollegeSports.com provide our partners with unparalleled promotional opportunities across numerous platforms," said Brian Bedol, president and CEO, CSTV. "As the new multi-media home of college sports, CSTV is perfectly positioned to help them build and strengthen relationships with their alumni, students and fans."
"These schools and conferences recognize the enhanced value CollegeSports.com provides through our unique suite of products and services," said Paul Kallis, general manager, College Sports Online. "We look forward to utilizing the latest in interactive technologies to develop new and innovative ways for our partners to connect with their fans."
CSTV offers schools and conferences the powerful combination of the leading television network and the leading online and broadband company dedicated exclusively to college sports. College Sports TV televises more men's and women's college sports than any other network, presenting regular season and championship event coverage from every major collegiate athletic conference, in addition to nine NCAA Championships.
"CollegeSports.com offers a tremendous amount of resources that will enable us to build a much more robust site, resulting in an enhanced user experience for our schools' alumni and fans," said James E. Delany, commissioner, The Big Ten Conference. "We are always looking for new ways to connect with the Big Ten's nationwide fan base, and the combined College Sports TV and CollegeSports.com offers us plenty of innovative opportunities."
"CSTV's on-air and online programming and promotion has allowed us to promote our teams and student-athletes more effectively than ever before," said Gary Sobba, general manager, Tar Heel Sports Marketing, the media rights holder for the University of North Carolina Athletics. "CollegeSports.com features such as GameTracker' and College Sports Pass' have resulted in increased traffic to our site and a closer relationship with followers of the Tar Heels. We are eager to continue working with CollegeSports.com to create even more ways to reach our fans."
CollegeSports.com offers network partners a complete Web site solution, including online brand management, content delivery, consumer marketing, and business/commerce solutions. Its "College Sports Pass" subscription service provides live and archived audio and video of games, coaches' shows, press conferences and other exclusive broadband programming. CollegeSports.com's exclusive "GameTracker" application provides live statistics, scores and play-by-play for football, basketball, baseball and softball.
CollegeSports.com is the leader in designing, developing, implementing and overseeing official online stores for athletic departments. With more than 90 official online stores in operation, including those for North Carolina, Notre Dame, Georgia and USC, CollegeSports.com is the number one online retailer of collegiate licensed merchandise.
All official athletic sites produced by CollegeSports.com benefit from CSTV's new partnership with Akamai, the global leader in distributed computing solutions and services. CSTV and Akamai are creating an advanced, on-demand broadband platform for the reliable and high-performing delivery of college sports content.
College Sports TV, the fastest-growing independent cable network, is available to more than 20 million homes nationally on cable and satellite. The network is available on Time Warner, Adelphia and Insight cable systems, among others, and is also available on DirecTV (channel 610). For information on CSTV availability in particular markets, consumers can log on to www.collegesports.com/getcstv or call their cable or satellite operator.
CSTV was co-founded by President/CEO Brian Bedol, Chairman Stephen Greenberg and Executive Vice President Chris Bevilacqua. Bedol and Greenberg co-founded Classic Sports Network, which they sold to ESPN. It is now ESPN Classic. Bevilacqua is a former senior executive with Nike Inc., where he headed the company's successful foray into the college market.
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Eric Handler
CSTV: College Sports Television
212-342-8760
ehandler@cstv.com