Fancast, a new Web site product for college athletic departments, is looking to capture market share from College Sports Online, the current Web site publishing leader among university athletic departments.
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| System was tested on LSU Web sites. |
The product, a collaborative effort between Louisiana-based Web design and development group Eatelweb and Digital Signal Group, a multimedia company in South Carolina, has been used and tested for the last five years through Web sites for Louisiana State University’s athletic program.
The two companies introduced Fancast as a product for other colleges and conferences at the annual National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics convention in Dallas earlier this month.
Two products, fancast.net and fancast.tv, are offered under the Fancast program. Fancast.net offers free news and information to fans. Fancast.tv is a subscription site that offers streaming audio and video of live and archived games, coaches’ shows, press conferences and online chats.
A school can sign up for one or both site offerings. That enables any school that currently uses College Sports Online for its official Web site, for example, to add a fancast.tv agreement to supplement its existing free content.
Fancast’s developers believe its subscription content is more comprehensive and provided at faster speeds than its competition, said Jason Domangue, manager at Eatelweb. He added that Fancast’s strength is its ability to offer one-stop-shopping Web services to its partners.
Fancast offers its college clients a net revenue split of between 30 percent and 34 percent through subscriptions and advertising efforts on its sites. A three-year contract for a fancast.net package ranges from $5,000 to $15,000. A three-year fancast.tv package ranges from $8,000 to $12,000 a year.
By comparison, services offered by College Sports Online carry annual fees ranging from $5,000 to $20,000.
Domangue said Eatelweb and Digital Signal Group are initially shopping Fancast to mid-major Division I schools, which receive less television exposure and therefore have fewer of their revenue sports (football and basketball) tied up in rights contracts.
College Sports Online has agreements with about 150 collegiate properties. Industry competitor XOS Network (formerly New Media Networks) counts about 15 schools in its mix of business.
