The NBA and WNBA and SportsLine.com announced a multi-year marketing partnership yesterday involving a variety of initiatives. The relationship offers SportsLine league licensing rights, presenting sponsorship of "The NBA Beat," NBA.com's interactive talk show, the production of a fantasy game for NBA.com and other cross-promotional opportunities. The deal also gives SportsLine.com users custom NBA video highlight packages. Meanwhile, SportsLine.com Euro-Asian subsidiary Sports.com will receive real-time scoring and stats of every NBA/WNBA game and the right to make available to their users Audio League Pass, NBA.com's home/away radio feeds of every game (SportsLine.com). The SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL's Noah Liberman notes that SportsLine joins Yahoo, AOL and ESPN.com as a marketing partner. Neither group "would reveal the exact terms of the deal, but both said that most of the cash changing hands relates to the sponsorship of 'The NBA Beat.'" Liberman calls the deal "instrumental to SportsLine.com's continued evolution into a viable Web-content company, and it provides the NBA another Web promotional outlet" (SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL, 1/1 issue).
NO MOVEMENT ON WALL STREET: CNNfn's Bruce Francis reported that SportsLine.com is "scoring a major Internet deal" with the NBA ("Digital Jam," 1/2). LocalBusiness.com's John Hernandez wrote that SportsLine.com is "trying to start the New Year off on a high note, after seeing its stock nosedive" 89%, from a '99 year-end close of $50.13 to a '00 year-end close of $5.31 (LocalBusiness.com, 1/2). Shares of SportsLine.com stock closed yesterday unchanged at $5.31.
