Sidearm’s pitch well-received as college website portfolio grows

Between midnight and 5 a.m. on Friday, the halls inside the Syracuse, N.Y., headquarters of Sidearm Sports will be as busy as they’ve ever been. That’s because during that five-hour window Sidearm will take over operation of the official athletic websites for 38 schools, including the likes of Alabama, Iowa and Stanford.

When the migration is complete, Sidearm will be the 2016-17 website host for close to 150 Division I schools, including 30 schools in the power five conferences. That gives the company the website rights to more power five schools than any other provider.

“It’s staggering to think how far we’ve come in a relatively short period of time,” said Sidearm President and CEO Jeff Rubin.

Just two years ago, power five athletic directors could have been forgiven for not knowing what Sidearm was. The company was barely a factor when it came to competing for website business at the highest tier of Division I. Sidearm played mostly at the Division II and III levels. In fact, Sidearm still has more than 450 school clients in Division II and III.

Kansas, Syracuse and Texas were the only schools in the power five where Sidearm owned the website rights two years ago.

That began to change in June 2014 when college marketing powerhouse Learfield acquired Sidearm and infused the business with resources and, just as importantly, its 40 years’ worth of connections throughout the college world.

Sidearm already had the technology and innovation to play at the highest levels of the college space, Learfield’s leaders reasoned. It just needed a nudge. Plus, owning a website provider like Sidearm would help Learfield deepen its school relationships with another business offering.

Learfield COO Marc Jenkins has overseen the Sidearm acquisition and integration.

“We just weren’t good at marketing ourselves and we didn’t have the name recognition that CBS and NeuLion had,” Rubin said. “It was going to be a long day for us to get into the room with the decision-makers.”

CBS Interactive and NeuLion owned what essentially was a two-company race for college websites when Learfield bought Sidearm. At the start of the 2014-15 year, CBSi had 35 schools in the power five to NeuLion’s 22. Sidearm had three.

Competitors in the space say privately that Sidearm has benefited from lower prices and a basic business model that doesn’t offer as many bells and whistles as others. Most of Sidearm’s deals charge an annual licensing fee of $10,000 to $40,000. Mobile apps cost more. At the power five level, Sidearm’s deals tend to be revenue-share arrangements.

Sidearm, meanwhile, says it is working on a number of innovations, like automatically updated score and

Kansas and Texas were early Sidearm clients.

“We studied them all, and we found their presentation to be the most impactful and authentic,” said Mike Hill, Florida’s executive associate athletic director.

The Gators agreed to go with Sidearm late last year after operating its site in-house for years.

“For us, the crucial part was mobile and the ability to navigate on a handheld,” Hill said. “We also talked to a number of colleagues about support and we were impressed with what people said.”

And then there’s the Learfield factor. Learfield can’t tell a school to do business with Sidearm, but it is certainly in a position as the multimedia rights holder to influence the decision. Of the 38 schools migrating to Sidearm this week, 23 also have multimedia rights deals with Learfield.

But Rubin points to two recent wins that changed the conversation. Florida, which has rights deals with Fox Sports and IMG College, picked Sidearm over the usual cast of competitors. And a few months ago, the Pac-12 signed a deal that turned over 11 of its 12 schools, plus the conference site, to Sidearm.

“It would be easy for people to think that we’re going to get Alabama because they’re a Learfield school,” Rubin said. “But this has gone so far beyond that. Now if you’re anybody in Division I, you’re going to give us a chance.”