RealNetworks and the Official College Sports Network in the past year have seen a 63 percent increase in subscribers to College Sports Pass, the multimedia subscription package that makes available live game audio for about 60 college athletic programs, according to executives from the companies.
Those executives add that the success of the product bodes well for an industry that is still getting accustomed to making consumers pay.
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| Cravens |
"It's become a nice revenue opportunity for us and our schools," said OCSN President Jeff Cravens, who noted that fewer than half of OCSN's partner schools even offer premium content, and less than 1 percent of visitors to those schools' sites pay for content.
"The vast majority of our audience is not inclined to subscribe to premium content," Cravens said. "But I think that number is going to continue to grow over the next couple of years."
College Sports Pass, which OCSN and Real began charging for prior to the 2002-03 academic year, is available for $44.95 a year or $6.95 a month, or for $13.95 a month with RealOne SuperPass, which bundles news, sports and other content from a variety of media.
The two companies do not disclose subscriber numbers, although Cravens said that for College Sports Pass' first academic year, OCSN and Real sold roughly 75,000 "units." Each monthly or annual subscription purchased counts as a unit sold, so one subscriber could account for multiple units. The number of units sold to date for the 2003-04 academic year will be available later this month.
David Eckoff, Real's senior director of sports marketing, said Real executives are particularly encouraged that subscriber growth has far outpaced traffic to OCSN's hub, collegesports.com, and the 145 school sites that OCSN produces. November aggregate traffic figures for those sites from Nielsen/NetRatings show a 12 percent increase over November 2002, from 4.2 million unique visitors to 4.8 million unique visitors.
But Real and OCSN can expect continued growth to be more difficult, as OCSN's early success brought followers on the subscription path. Yahoo!, which had long provided the backbone for more than 100 schools to provide free audio broadcasts of games, before the 2003 college football season urged partner schools to switch to a subscription model. So far, 42 schools have made the switch, according to Yahoo! executives.
Omaha, Neb.-based New Media Networks also has emerged as a Web developer for college athletic departments. The company in the last seven months has signed seven schools, including five (Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas State, Colorado and Oregon) that made the switch from OCSN.
Each of New Media Networks' eight partner schools sells subscription-based multimedia offerings, according to NMN director of premium services Larry Punteney, who said OCSN's recent growth is a positive sign of where college fans' avidity and broadband growth can take this industry.
"If you combine the national affinity of displaced alums and fans with the rapid expansion of broadband services," Punteney said, "what everyone is seeing is an increase in users of subscription-based premium Internet offerings."
