CBS College Sports will run the official athletic Web sites for Alabama and Texas A&M as part of a deal that brings the network’s number of college online partners to 215.
The network will announce this week that it is relaunching Alabama’s RollTide.com and Texas A&M’s AggieAthletics.com, while renewing its deals with Arizona State, Georgetown, Gonzaga, Kansas, Louisville, Maryland, North Carolina, Northwestern, Texas Tech and West Virginia, as well as the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics.
Terms of these deals were not announced, but they typically involve a revenue-sharing agreement with either the school or the school’s rights holder.
The network is relaunching RollTide.com.
“Most of the time, the school is looking for us to engage their fans, broaden their fan base and help them generate revenue for the athletic department,” said Rob Schupler, senior vice president of university sales and marketing for the network. “Only, what, six or eight athletic departments make money? More and more, schools are looking to us to help them monetize their sites.”
Schupler said the ad inventory on these sites, which can range from standard banner ads to branded video content, is typically shared by CBS College Sports and the university’s rights holder, agencies like ISP Sports, Learfield Sports, IMG College or Nelligan.
CBS College Sports has a national sales team that aggregates that online advertising inventory.
“We can deliver to advertisers affluent, college-educated consumers that are on the site to follow their school,” Schupler said. “They’re coming to the site for content that they can’t get anywhere else.”
That content might be live audio or video broadcasts, player and coach features, all-access subscription services, “the kind of insight that [TV] networks can’t commit to,” Schupler said. “It allows the displaced fan to follow his team.”
Schupler said CBS College Sports will continue to target Southeastern Conference schools such as Alabama, where fan loyalty is at its highest. CBS College Sports’ chief competition in the space is JumpTV, which formerly held Alabama’s online rights.
