Streaming media company provides exposure, revenue opportunities for university sports

As Canadian Interuniversity Sports' (CIS) official broadcaster, Ottawa-based online media company Streaming Sports Network (SSN) is exposing Canadian athletics to a broader audience, creating a new revenue stream for universities and migrating more live sports viewers from TV to the Internet. "The fact is there is already a vast market for people who like sports who aren't necessarily technically oriented," says SSN president Bengt Neathery. "And a lot of content on the Internet is somewhat dependent on that person having some technical know how. But basically, now we've turned your computer into a TV set, so I think is a great genre to bridge the people who aren't traditional Internet people to use the computer for something that makes sense to them." The Internet provides an ideal medium for Canadian university sports because they get so little coverage on local, regional or national television. "Canada is, geographically speaking, difficult to travel, and friends and family and the people who support these student athletes can't make it to these games," says Neathery. "It's quite a spread and Canadians don't necessarily stay close to home to go to school. So that was another big motivator for the service. But obviously this wouldn't work just based on friends and family. That's not going to pay the bills." SSN is owned by Integrating Solutions Inc. (ISI), of which Neathery is also president. ISI began operating SSN a year ago essentially as a public service and has had to subsidize about 80% of its costs. "What we were doing was saying ‘let's go ahead and do this, we know this technology inside out, but let's get the sports online and feel it out and see if there is a legitimate market,'" says Neathery. "So we'll subsidize it and see if the viewership expands, and if it does we'll see if there's a business there. And that seems to be the case this last year." As proof, Neathery says the CIS men's and women's basketball championships each drew about 10,000 viewers, and the women's hockey around 6,000 - impressive numbers for Canadian university sports. As a result, ISI is incorporating SSN into a separate subsidiary, and has found new partners to help finance the online expansion. SSN wants to become the location for universities and colleges to their games. Currently, SSN charges schools $750 to stream all team games life, archive them and promote the competitions. That fee will rise to $1000 next year, which is still paltry considering some schools have dozens of varsity sports teams. And the schools can sell their own advertising on their section of the SSN site, which Neathery says could generate $5,000 to $10,000. Since SSN encourages schools to provide play-by-play and colour commentary with their games, athletes aren't the only students to receive exposure through SSN. "A big thing for us is where we can get the cooperation with the different assets that a university or college will have and bring them into it, get the students involved, and we've had a lot of success with that," says Neathery. "There's a lot of relationships between universities and colleges, or high schools or former athletes living in the community. It's the beauty of being able to bring a community product and expose it on a national or international level." SSN also provides a channel for ISI to sell its own streaming hardware such as wireless microphones to the schools for use in the broadcasts. But the service, says Neathery, wasn't founded entirely for business purposes. "We all believe in Canadian athletics and feel they are under funded and under exposed. And it's not for lack of game quality. The games are fantastic."

Streaming media company provides exposure, revenue opportunities for university sports

News | 04/10/2008 5:14 pm EDT

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