CBS College Sports, which owns the athletic Web site rights to more than 200 universities, is offering a midtier level of service designed to help schools save money and control more of their content.
In the past, CBS College signed its university partners to either a premium or a basic tier, depending on a school’s needs. The premium service, offered at a yearly cost near the mid-five figures, gives schools a comprehensive plan that accounts for content, streaming video, design and a host of revenue-generating opportunities. The basic service, priced about $10,000 annually, gets the site up and running, but the high-end design services and the other premium offerings are not included.
A new “premium lite” service will split the difference costwise and offer schools many of the premium offerings except for the publishing services, which will remain in the hands of the university partner.
“This new level of service that we’re introducing speaks to the needs of some of our clients, as well as what’s happening with the economy,” said Rob Schupler, senior vice president of university sales and marketing. “Premium lite still allows our clients the ability to tap into our design and our revenue-generating opportunities, but they will have full publishing control over the site, so they don’t have to dig as deep into their pockets for the services.”
Most of the BCS-level schools, such as North Carolina and Notre Dame, are premium clients. The basic clients include smaller schools like Siena, Lamar and Holy Cross. Utah State, a member of the Western Athletic Conference, upgraded last week from basic to the new tier.
“The more we can do ourselves, the more inexpensive it is,” said Jana Doggett, Utah State’s senior associate athletic director for external operations. “We were at a basic package, but we wanted to do more with the site, so we decided to spend to upgrade, but not a lot more.”
Utah State’s spending with CBS College will increase from nearly $15,000 to $21,000 this year. The Aggies plan to use two of CBS College’s revenue-generating tools, the photo gallery and the streaming video.
Schupler envisions roughly 50 of CBS College’s 215 university partners moving to premium lite, with 100 at the premium level and 65 at basic.
