SportsLine USA "agreed to pay" $1M to Weatherline, a
U.S. provider of weather and sports information reports by
telephone, to "end a trademark infringement lawsuit,"
according to L.A. Lorek of the Ft. Lauderdale SUN-SENTINEL.
Weatherline, a St. Louis-based company, will assign
SportsLine USA its federal registration for the mark
"SportsLine," which was originally granted in the '70s.
SportsLine will record a non-recurring charge of
"approximately" $1.1M including legal fees associated with
the settlement in its third quarter (SUN-SENTINEL, 10/19).
EYE ON SPORTS: Lorek also profiled SportsLine USA and
the growth of the four-year-old company. SportsLine CEO
Michael Levy: "ESPN was 10 times bigger than we were when we
started. We're closing the gap." Last month, CBS
SportsLine reported more than 6.3 million page views per day
and over 10 million on Sundays. Average visits to the site
number 600,000 per day. Despite the traffic, SportsLine "is
not yet profitable." It had revenues of $12M in '97, and
losses of $34.2M. This year, the company, which employs 260
people, expects to have $30M in revenue and a loss of $35M.
The company is not expected to turn a profit until 2000.
Levy said that "about" 10% of SportsLine's traffic comes via
AOL, but he hopes that figure will increase with a recently
expanded relationship to about 25% (SUN-SENTINEL, 10/19).
WORLD SERIES: SportsLine has partnered with MLB on the
official World Series site, www.worldseries.com, and in
N.Y., Mary Huhn reviewed it under the header, "World Series
Site Hits An Online Home Run" (N.Y. POST, 10/18).
