Web Sites Expect Record Traffic For College Football Signing Day
By Eric Fisher, Staff Writer, SportsBusiness Journal
Today is National Signing Day for college football recruits, and it is expected to spark record levels of online activity for major Web sites covering the event. CBSSports.com will be funneling traffic to partner site MaxPreps.com as the two operations deepen their editorial and sales ties along with CBS College Sports. ESPN.com will roll out a recruiting tracker during the day, along with extensive amounts of content from its ESPNRise.com and Scouts Inc. hubs and a simulcast of ESPNU’s Signing Day coverage from 3:00-5:30pm ET on ESPN360.com and ESPN Mobile TV. Fox’ Scout Media has developed a Signing Day “commitment widget” that will allow real-time news to be streamed onto a desktop or other Web pages. And Rivals,com, which has played a key role in giving rise to the entire phenomenon of Signing Day as a national media event, will continue its coverage in partnership with parent operation Yahoo. The four major players will be joined by dozens more destinations developing Signing Day content. “This could be a very monumental day. There’s the perfect storm brewing in the amount of activity we’re anticipating for Signing Day,” said Rivals.com CEO Shannon Terry. “It’s definitely more in vogue for the major recruits to all have a press conference that gets broadly distributed.” CBSSports.com Senior VP & GM Jason Kint added, "This is going to be a huge day for us. And we’re now fully leveraging all the resources [across CBS Corp.] in a way we never have before.”
BECOMING BIGGER EVERY YEAR: Part of the spiked interest has stemmed from the expansion of Signing Day from something covered simply from the point of view of the talent-acquiring college football program, as individual high school athletes are increasingly the subject of national-level coverage. “There’s definitely more equilibrium [in the coverage] between the individuals and the programs,” said Fox Sports Interactive Senior VP and Scout Media GM Jeff Husvar. “These recruits are becoming personalities at a very young age. But consumers are driving that elevation. They want to know what these kids are all about.” Significant corporate buys into the Signing Day coverage include Burger King’s presenting sponsorship across all of the CBS properties, and Under Armour’s sponsorship of Rivals.com’s coverage.
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