Website: LocalReplay

Interview With: Galeal (Gil) Zino

Is their more then one founder? If so, who are they?

Jordan Hunter – founder responsible for hardware and database architecture.

Mike Jaffe – founder responsible for software development.

What is your background and qualifications?

50% sports fanatic, 50% technology geek, 100% entrepreneur. I’ve led software and technology teams for most of the last ten years, building solutions that range from patented VoIP software to LocalReplay.com. I was a year-round athlete at the high school and college levels, coach, athletic director and now parent to young athletes.

What does your website do?

LocalReplay enables everyone involved in local sports – from nationwide sports organizations to individual videographers – to build interactive, multimedia sports websites to meet their web needs. Teams use the LocalReplay platform to host their team site with schedules, statistics, rosters, etc. Organizations and events build sites to promote and market their organization or event, usually including videos, photos and social networking for their members. Individuals start sites that range from sharing highlights with grandma to online resumes for recruiters. The LocalReplay platform is the first to serve entire local sports communities, not just for example high profile athletes or pro sports fans.

How do you generate revenue? If through ads, what ad network do you use?

We are starting to roll out premium services such as custom media production and virtual training in which LocalReplay shares revenue with our partners. We also generate revenue through ads, using a mix of direct sales/sponsorships, local sales (via LocalReplay teams) and three ad networks, AdSense, Burst and soon SportsGenic.

How have your marketed your site?

We have a tremendous volunteer team that has been doing event-based marketing in a few cities. We’ve done limited online advertising (90% of our traffic is organic). Our best marketing has been the leagues and teams that love their LocalReplay sites – they spread the word for us.

Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?

We’ve raised $600,000 in Angel and founder capital.

Are You currently looking for funding?

Yes, we are currently looking at potential additional Angel funding and potential VC funding.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

LocalReplay is built on LAMP, using EC2 for computing and S3 for storage.

What is your favorite feature on your website?

The team websites have changed the game from the web 1.0 world. They are self-serve, interactive, support unlimited video and photo, include personal sites for everyone involved with the team, support social networking, and feature integrated communication solutions.

The communications aspect is often cited as a favorite from team admins – for example, a coach sends a text from the field to a LR short-code saying that the field is too wet to play and practice is canceled. LR then multicasts that out via text, email and web to everyone involved with the team. An entire phone tree replaced with one text message.

Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

We are near inflection points in a few critical areas including mobile broadband and photo/video technology. So services will emerge that we aren’t even thinking about today. From the LocalReplay perspective, we want to be “in the field of play” during their development, so we can provide the relevant ones to our users (directly or via partners). Virtual training is one service in the very near future that we are currently working on with a couple of partners. As an example of one further into the future:

1. You are at a game with 1000s of other fans. We know this via the GPS in your mobile device and/or your LocalReplay settings.

2. You take a photo/video with your digital camera/camcorder that has a WiFi or 3G-data chip. The photo or video is sent to LocalReplay via that data connection.

3. LocalReplay multicasts the photo or video to all the other fans at the game that have subscribed to the service, or help package it up for peer-to-peer delivery via a connection like WiFi or Bluetooth. Maybe with a link to an online poll – vote if it really was a touchdown. Instant replay for everyone at a local sports event without a multi-million dollar jumbotron. Personalized, social instant replay – watch it as often as you want, share it with people there or not there, comment on it, create a poll from it, save it anywhere, mash it up with another application, etc.

Website:  Yardbarker

Interview With:  Pete Vlastelica, CEO

What is the background of the founders of Yardbarker?

There are 4 of us. The three early founders were myself and two brothers, Jack and Jeff, Kloster. Jack and I met while getting our MBAs at UC Berkeley. Before Berkeley I worked at Disney doing large international content deals, and also at a boutique interactive marketing agency in New York. At Berkeley we wanted to develop a business plan that moved the ball forward in a segment of digital media and we thought sports medias a category was ripe for innovation. We hooked up with our fourth co-founder, Mark Johns, who was the first engineer at Ofoto, which became Kodak Gallery.

Are you Venture backed?

Yes. For the first twelve months we operated on a round of funds raised from friends and family. Then about a year ago we took money from a group of angel investors. This March, we raised capital from Draper Fisher Jurvetsen.

Are you looking at expanding your funding?

Not sure

How many unique visitors are you getting a month?

5 million monthly uniques across the Yardbarker Network.

Is Fox Sports your only content deal? How does it work?

FoxSports.com syndicates articles and videos from the Yardbarker Network. Every publisher in our network has the opportunity to opt-in to this program and take advantage of the extra distribution. The articles that Fox publishes include links back to both Yardbarker and the original article on the publisher’s blog.

How does the Yardbarker Ad Network work?

The publishers in our network assign us the responsibility of representing their sites to brand advertisers. We offer advertisers a very efficient way to reach the large collective audience that hangs out on all the sites in our network. We split the revenue with our publishers and everybody wins.

Was the Yardbaker Ad Network apart of your original business plan?

No, actually it wasn’t. As with most startups, our business model was part of an evolution. . Our site actually started out as something like a “Digg for Sports.” We found that most of the people using it were sports bloggers who were promoting their sites, and it turned out some of the bloggers in this group were looking for a better way to make money from their sites. That was the beginning of the Yardbarker Network.

What is your favorite part about running Yardbarker?

Building the team. We have grown from 5 employees to 20 employees over the past year, and every individual at the company is outstanding. We have been able to build our team while not losing the passion that was there when we started. We’re proud of that.

How have you had so much success with Athlete Bloggers?

We learned that athletes were looking for something like this. There is a new generation of athletes that don’t want to just be quoted in a newspaper article – they want to be able to tell their story on their own terms and connect with fans in an authentic way. We always stress the importance of staying dedicated to their blogs. We tell them that it’s worse to start a blog and then quit than to never blog at all.

Was Greg Oden your first big athlete blogger?

You could say that. John Lackey was our first professional athlete blogger and Chris Henry (the running back for the Titans) was our very first athlete blogger leading up to last year’s NFL Draft.

How are the athletes paid?

We share advertising revenue with our athlete bloggers.

Have advertisers sponsored individual athlete blogs?

Yes, quite a few. Playstation sponsored Carmello Anthony’s blog; 2k Sports sponsored Greg Oden’s Blog, and Modells, a sporting goods company in Boston, sponsored Rajon Rondo’s blog, among others.

What type of technology do you use?

Yardbarker is custom built using Ruby on Rails

Any Bold Predictions for the future of sports and technology?

The definition of a Social Network is going to change – it’s no longer about being on one site where everyone else has to come visit you to hang out. Social functionality will start to spread across the web via a patchwork of sites with like-minded audiences. Widgets will get better. No matter where you are on the web you will feel like you’re in the social environment that you choose to be in. If I want to talk sports, I should be able to do that with my friends whether I’m on ESPN, Facebook, Yardbarker, or some small blog. The web itself is the ultimate social network.

(We had the pleasure of doing this interview over the phone with Pete and we thoroughly enjoyed it.  He seemed to understand his market extremely well and as long as Yardbarker can keep bringing in the advertisers we see them being dominant force in the sports space online)

Website: SportsZu.tv

SportZu.tv was founded by two Colorado companies, Interactive Marketing and Innovation (IMI), a strategic marketing company and SportsHD Productions, a high definition video production company (SHD).

IMI, SHD and the SportZu.tv initial investors own 100% of SportZu.tv.IMI and SHD have decades of experience in television and interactive content production and editing, video channel development, venue management, media operations, sponsorship sales, marketing and sports team operations. Both companies have significant local and North American contacts in the sports, corporate and media world including executive relationships with the National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, National Lacrosse League, Canadian Football League, Major League Lacrosse, Central Hockey League, Arena Football League, Fox Sports, CBS Sports, ESPN and others.

David Ehrlich, CEO. President and founder of IMI, Ehrlich is a former “40 under 40″ Sports Business Journal award winner while Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Kroenke Sports Enterprises (KSE) – owner of the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Avalanche, the Pepsi Center and a variety of other sports franchises and entertainment properties. Ehrlich has over 10 years of executive experience in the sports and entertainment industries.

Matt Bortz, President. Founder and President/COO of SHD, Bortz was the former President of BORTZ Sports, a sports marketing and consulting firm. In the course of his 15+ year career, Bortz assisted a variety of major professional and collegiate sports leagues and affiliated teams, including the NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS and the PGA Tour. Bortz has significant interactive platform experience, having consulted with NBA.com, PGATour.com and others in the interactive space.

Craig Jonas, Chief Business Development Officer. Founder, Principal and Chief Business Development Officer for SHD, Jonas has consulted for several sports entities (Basketball Travelers, PE4Life, and Inside Edge) and was Vice President for Business Development for the broadcast and interactive media technology firm, Sportvision. Prior to joining Sportvision, Jonas served as Executive Vice President for Coach’s Edge and initiated the $100M+ merger with Sportvision. Jonas is a former successful head college basketball coach and a current member of the National Sports Marketing Network Denver Board.

What does SportZu.tv do?

SportZu.tv is the bridge between the passion of professional sports and the audience and community of youth sports. SportZu.tv is an interactive sports community for professional sports organizations and youth sports organizations focused on kids ages 8 to 18, and their parents and coaches.

SportZu.tv was created to serve the youth sports market in three ways:

1.       Provide entertaining and educational high quality video (over 2,400 minutes of professionally produced content) featuring professional sports teams, coupled with amateur video content provided by the SportZu.tv community of users;

2.       Enable sports leagues and teams to reach out through SportZu.tv video channels to their local community while marketing their own games and activities; and

3.       Provide players, coaches and parents with an excellent resource for (a) improving their sport performance and understanding through interaction with high quality videos featuring professional players and teams, and (b) creating their own sports channel to communicate to others on their team and share experiences with others in their local and online community with similar interests. 

How do you generate revenue?

SportZu.tv generates revenue by selling advertising as well as creating sponsorship opportunities for groups that wish to be associated with a given SportZu.tv channel. An example of the former is the sale of an advertising package to Dairy Queen. An example of the latter is the sale of the presenting sponsorship of the SportZu.tv Doctor’s Corner to Peak Orthopedics (launch July 2008).

To motivate its content partners to activate their channels, SportZu.tv also provides a revenue share to such partners from revenue generated on their channel. Partners are then economically motivated to keep their channel active and fresh.

SportZu.tv is also preparing to launch additional ancillary revenue platforms such as pod-casting subscription services and merchandising that will follow a similar revenue sharing model.

Currently SportZu.tv is managing its own advertising and sponsorship inventory.

How have your marketed your site?

SportZu.tv has created proprietary marketing templates for its relationships with professional sports teams and youth sports organizations. SportZu.tv’s professional team marketing is focused on high-impact mass audience promotions while the youth sports organizations’ marketing elements focus more on connecting directly with the youth audience and attracting new SportZu.tv members.

Notwithstanding the different approaches, there is crossover in the marketing efforts. SportZu.tv obtains access to each partner’s member and fan databases for direct marketing and conducts on-site marketing at high attendance events and tournaments.

Sample professional sports team marketing benefits include:

1. Editorial exposure on team websites and through email blasts;
2. Syndicated SportZu.tv video footage on arena jumbotron;
3. Event presence and in-venue giveaways;
4. Video access to players and team management; and
5. Re-purposed game, community and in-venue footage.

 
Sample youth sport organization marketing benefits include:

1. Email introductions about the relationship and benefits;
2. Email newsletter alerts about video and channel updates;
3. Exclusive video promotions;
4. Focus group sessions with players, parents and coaches; and
5. Syndicated video player and footage of special events.

Funding History

SportZu.tv’s initial funding came from a “friends and family” round and we recently closed an additional round of financing with the same investor group.

Are you currently looking for additional funding?

With adequate funding to continue our expansion outside of Colorado, we would take on additional strategic funding partners under the right circumstance, but it is not currently a priority.

What type(s) of technology do you currently use?

SportZu.tv was built on the Drupal platform (ex: MTV.com, Sony Music, Warner Brothers).  A key driver for the choice of the Drupal platform is its open-source nature, which enables us to easily import additional functionality, remain current with new technology and scale quickly.

Under our platform SportZu.tv members can express themselves by creating personal video channels, taking sports communication and interaction to the next level.

Teams and Leagues using SportZu.tv can:

1. Create a video library and syndicate content across assets;
2. Showcase new and repurposed footage on the channel;
3. Extend current sponsor exposure and relationships;
4. Create exclusive video-based contests; and
5. Strengthen connection and communication to key audiences.

Coaches using SportZu.tv can:

1. Host team information on a private channel or group;
2. Upload and share user created videos and/or copy professional “tips and drills” to their team channel; and
3. Communicate important team information and updates to all team members and families.

Youth Athletes and Parents using SportZu.tv can:

1. Communicate with friends and family about their games;
2. Put game video and pictures on their channel or group;
3. Watch other family’s video of games they missed; and
4. View tips and drills, nutrition, sportsmanship and sports psychology from industry professionals.

What is your favorite SportZu.tv feature?

We believe that the SportZu.tv user’s ability to create a personalized video channel either as an individual or a coach creating a team channel or for a web site using the SportZu.tv syndicated video player, is a critical advantage as the web becomes increasingly video-centric.

Any bold predictions for the future of sports and technology?

The 8-18 year old wants to control his or her own content experience. Teams and youth sports organizations will have to cater to that desire and utilize SportZu.tv like platforms to reach youth. If they can do that effectively they will engage the youth audience and the youth audience will shape their product and content in exiting ways that people had not anticipated.

What are the founders’ backgrounds and qualifications?

Website:  Hot Clicks

Interview With: Jimmy Traina

What is your background?  How did you end up at SI?

I was actually a broadcasting major in college but I quickly realized that was a mistake. So I just tried to get jobs in any field of journalism. I ended up with a job at the Associated Press shortly after college. A friend from there ended up leaving for a gig at SI. After he was there for a little while, he gave me a tip that SI was hiring. I managed to get an interview and they made the very wise decision of hiring me.

You are around blogs all day long.  You could probably do a great job on your own.  Have you thought about creating one yourself?

I have. Most of my friends encourage me to do it on a daily basis because a) I find some unbelievable (i.e. inappropriate) stuff that I just can’t link to on SI.com and b) I can’t be completely 100% myself in Hot Clicks. But right now I’d only start my own blog if I could do it while still working at SI and I just don’t have the time.  I also don’t know if I have that much to say about sports. If I did start my own blog, sports would probably be only 20% of it.

How many emails do you get a day? How many unread emails are in your Inbox right now?

Bad timing. I just cleaned out my inbox. But I last checked my email at 10pm last night. I logged on to my email at 7am today. I had 72 unread messages. 50 of those were Hot Clicks related. So I probably get close to 100 a day.

Have you had to mark certain bloggers emails as spam because they send every post they create?

Ha. Good question. I haven’t spammed any bloggers. There are only a few who send me links every single day, and it doesn’t really bother me.

How many “Thank You” emails do you receive a week when you bring blogs thousands of visitors?

Most sites that I link to on a regular basis have e-mailed me to say thanks. Bloggers have been extremely gracious.

What is a typical day at work for you?  Do you just scour the internet for stories to link up or do you have other responsibilities?

Typical work day starts at 7am when I get on the train. I fire up my laptop and check emails for about 45 minutes. I get to the office at 8 and I go through more emails and surf the Web. When Hot Clicks first started, 10% of the links came from emails and 90% came from me surfing. But now that Hot Clicks has sort of taken off, I probably get 75% of the links from email and 25% from me surfing. So for all the bloggers reading this — make sure you email good stuff. Anyway, I have a deadline to get Hot Clicks posted on SI.com between 10-10:30. From 10:30 to 11 I’m in a daily SI.com meeting. Once that’s over, I then spend several minutes fixing all my typos and answering some email because I usually get some questions/comments/praise/criticisms right after Hot Clicks go up. Then I get to work on producing the rest of the Extra Mustard page. I usually have one or two columns a day to edit and post. I also put together our weekly Caught in the Act photo gallery, so I try to spend time each day surfing photo web sites.

In the latest Comscore Rankings that The Big Lead is able to provide, SI is ranked 8th among major sports media sites.  Being that you are a producer for them, is this something you keep an eye on?

Of course. How could you not keep an eye on them, you know?

What kind of advice would you give bloggers who are trying to get noticed?

There are many people way more qualified than me to answer this question, so the first thing I’d tell them is to seek those folks out for advice. But obviously being original and unique always helps. Thinking outside the box will always get you noticed. And try to practice quality over quantity. More posts don’t equal a better site. Oh, and Erin Andrews photos always help.

Any bold predictions for the future of sports media on the internet?

I think this is a fascinating time for all media. I honestly think – and I could be way off on this – but I really do think that the two entities that have had the biggest influence on media over the past couple of years are Perez Hilton and TMZ. I honestly don’t think 5 years ago mainstream media sites would’ve ran with a story about one player telling another player to “taste is ass.” But TMZ had that video. And once that happens, the party is over. It’s everywhere. And fast. And I don’t think media outlets quite know how to handle it all yet. But at the end of the day, this is a business and the bottom line is money. You have to give people what they want in order to generate traffic (if you want to stay in business.) So it’s really the readers that are going to determine where things go.

Website: Stracka

Interview with: Chase Stracka, CMO

Is there more than one founder? If so, who are they?

Just one founder, Jim Stracka

What is your background and qualifications?

(Jim has): Over 20 years in technology

What does your website do?

It helps golfers connect and enjoy the game more.  It is a virtual clubhouse.

How do you generate revenue? If through ads, what ad network do you use?

Ads, using various ad networks and direct selling

How have your marketed your site?

Various golf websites pgatour.com and pga.com

Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?

Self funded

Are You currently looking for funding?

No

What is your favorite feature on your website?

The Stracka Line: www.strackaline.com

Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

Technology is fun, but sports are still mainly physical and mental.  Technology like Stracka.com is good for the game.  It will help people connect and play more golf.

Website: Prep Champs

Interview With: Dean Bundschu

Is their more then one founder? If so, who are they?

Dean Bundschu, Founder & CEO. Co-founder of InTheNumbers; Orion Int’l; US Army Officer; BS ONU

Hal Fisher, Founder & Dir. Marketing. Founder of MilitaryStars, largest US Military Career Fair Company in US; serial entrepreneur & marketing expert

Jay Kerr, Founder & Dir. of Strategy. Consultant for Northrop Grumman, Titan, Deloitte, PepsiCo. Air Force Officer; MBA

Bryan Minihan, CTO. CTO, SpeedGreetings.com; extensive web apps dev at Accenture, GSK, The Nature Company

Gary Hayes – CFO: 30 year veteran software and technology services CFO (DCS, F-   Origin, Ateb, Koz.com, SAGA)

What is your background and qualifications?

Prior to founding PrepChamps, Dean was a co-founder of InTheNumbers, a North Carolina based company providing foreclosure data to the real estate market.  He also worked for Orion International, a recruiting and consulting firm, where he was consistently a top performer, responsible for Fortune 1000 Companies.  Prior to venturing into the business world, Dean served for 6 years as an Officer in the United States Army. This service included a combat tour in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he commanded a 120+ soldier HQ Company. Dean’s highly effective sales and marketing skills, corporate business experience and leadership ability complement his entrepreneurial interests.  Dean attended Ohio Northern University on a full ROTC scholarship where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science.

What does your website do?

PrepChamps (PC) combines sports, video, media, social communications and real-time events to build communities around high school athletes, coaches, fans, parents, their sports, communities and institutions.  The platform enables athletes to create player profiles, upload highlight films and statistics; creating a viewable, searchable and shareable database for college recruiters and fans alike. College recruiters benefit from centralized recruiting workflow/tools – connecting with, tracking, and verifying eligibility for prospective recruits, through platform and via offline events.  PC model is able to generate scalable multi-channel recurring revenue through advertising, events, online subscriptions, mobile and retail within a $2.1 billion high school recruiting market. PC hosts off-line high school athletic combines & tournaments, has structured successful partnerships with Reebok/Driven Athletics, D1 Sports, Five-Star Basketball and Wazoo Sports.  Aggressive marketing strategy has produced solid ROI and very low CPA has allowed PC to grow very rapidly.  Offline partnerships provide barriers to entry, strong branding and additional revenue streams. Currently projecting 125,000 monthly uniques and 30,000 registered users by July to grow content and revenue.

How have your marketed your site?

PrepChamps believes that activity breeds activity, so we are simultaneously initiating numerous Internet marketing campaigns, targeting and leveraging the power of social platforms like Facebook, MyYearbook, eSpin and MySpace to drive a high volume of users to our site.  Our web-based marketing plan is based on Five core strategies: CPA Direct
Advertising, Website Optimization, Affiliate Programs, User-Based Viral Marketing, and Permission-Based Email Marketing.

Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?

PrepChamps was funded with a total investment of $150,000 by the founders.  The company recently raised a total of $1,200,000 in seed funding.

Are You currently looking for funding?

Yes.  Currently in the process of large Series B equity-based capital raise.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

PrepChamps initial Beta test platform was completed in July 2007, and the 2.0 version was launched in early March, 2008.  The full production application leverages Ruby on Rails on a Linux/MySQL platform to deliver fully-tested, scalable components and features designed for high-capacity, load-balanced, fault-tolerant social networking capabilities.  The video delivery system leverages Amazon Simple Storage Solutions to offload high-volume, lengthy video uploads and viewing from the core application.  The core application delivers custom features in small widgets on each page to the four primary user-types (Athletes, Coaches, Fans and Visitors), as well as site-wide capabilities across the platform, including blogs, forums, search, favorites, messaging, etc.

What is your favorite feature on your website?

NCAA Clearing House Checklist

Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

Websites that rely exclusively on a advertisement based revenue model will have to adapt to a changing environment or fail.  Advertising is moving from a CPM basis to a CPC and eventually to a lead generation model.  Therefore websites will need to effectively mine behavioral based data within their platform in order to effectively provide targeted advertising to their users.  This type of advertising will need to add to the user experience, rather than clutter the experience.

Websites that can aggregate content on a local or better yet a hyper-local level will be able to succeed within this changing environment.  Very few sites can generate sufficient adverting revenue within a short period of time.  The days where you could command a high valuation based on website traffic are numbered.  Internet companies that can find various ways to monetize their communities will be a lot more successful than ad driven models.

Website: Seat Servant

Interview With: Rob Bracco

Is their more then one founder?

Yes

If so, who are they?

Neel Patel, a senior at Indiana University studying Computer Science and Biology.

What is your background and qualifications?

I am going a senior at IU studying Computer Science, Economics, and Mathematics. I started out programming 4 years ago when I was in high school and this is my first start-up company. I have been employed in the field as a researcher, a web programmer for Indiana University, and most recently as a software developer for a small ticket company. I will graduate in 2009 and have plans to attend graduate school.

What does your website do?

SeatServant is a ticket aggregator and search engine. Over the past five years, the online ticket market has grown immensely resulting in a large number of sites that sell tickets online. This raises a number of problems for ticket buyers. They have to go to many different ticket exchanges, they may be wary of buying from lesser known sites, and, most importantly, they might pay too much for their seats. We developed SeatServant to allow users to search the majority of those sites simultaneously and from one location, all in real time. With our site, users can know they are getting the best seats for the best price from a qualified seller without doing all the work themselves.

How do you generate revenue? If through ads, what ad network do you use?

When a user finds a ticket on our site that they wish to buy, they are taken directly to the website that lists it. If they purchase the ticket, then that site gives us a percentage of a sale. The commission and payout vary based on which site sells the ticket.

How have your marketed your site?

Currently we are running pay-per-click marketing campaigns through AdWords and Facebook. We are developing an affiliate program that will allow publishers to generate revenue off of our software. We are experimenting with local marketing through newspapers and other publications. Now we are considering developing a Facebook Application to help users track their favorite artists and concerts.

Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?

We are self-funded

Are You currently looking for funding?

We just finished our beta launch and we are currently interested in at least some level of funding.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

All of our applications are developed with Python and are built within the Django framework. We use postgresql for our database and our servers run RedHat Linux.

What is your favorite feature on your website?

My favorite feature is actually something that is still in development so I can’t reveal it until release but I promise it is coming soon. Right now we aren’t yet a feature-rich website but my favorite feature, if you can call it a feature, is our decision to include a lot of smaller sites in our search software. A lot of these smaller brokers have great deals in their inventory, but the majority of fans never see them because these sites don’t have enough money to compete with Stubhub’s marketing. I feel that our software gives these sites the ability to compete on an even keel with the larger companies in a way that they have never before been able to. Most importantly this means that fans have a new way to find these cheap tickets and to be sure that they are authentic.

Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

We’ve all seen the way technology has influenced professional sports over the past 10 years. Every year more and more people watch March Madness online and fill out their brackets over the internet. I’m predicting that as technology becomes cheaper and more universal, it will trickle down and affect all organized sports, not just professional. In the future everything from little-league baseball to soccer to golf will be affected by ever-growing technology.

Website:  Sports Mates

Interview With:  Blair Cummins

Is their more then one founder? If so, who are they?

There are two founders: Richard Austin and myself.

What are your backgrounds and qualifications?

Both Richard and I have been involved with online sports media for a number of years. We were retained by Terra Lycos in 2001 to build the official website of Anna Kournikova and have worked on projects for clients such as Nike/Manchester United and SFX Sports.

Richard was one of the founders of WTAWorld.com (now TennisForum.com) and MensTennisForums.com, the two largest online professional tennis fan communities in the world, and was also hired as a consultant to Rivals.com in its first incarnation to help develop its tennis content channel.

Our full bios are available at http://www.sportsmatesinc.com/about/management.

What does your website do?

SportsMates is a social networking service that is focused on connecting sports fans around their favorite sports, leagues, teams and players. Our social networking platform has the following features:

- Member profiles.
- Internal email.
- Message boards.
- Photo galleries.
- Clubs (including user-created clubs).
- Blog aggregation.
- Link directories.
- Search.
- Live chat.

How have your marketed your site?

We have not engaged in much “traditional” marketing. Instead, we have chosen to recruit or acquire existing online sports communities or properties and to migrate their communities onto SportsMates.

For instance, InfiernoRojo.com is one of the most popular fan sites for the Independiente soccer club in Argentina. When we launched PorDeporte (http://www.pordeporte.com/), our Spanish-language sports social network, we arranged for their 19,000+ member community to move to PorDeporte (http://clubs.pordeporte.com/infiernorojo).

How do you generate revenue? If through ads, what ad network do you use?

We generate revenue in three ways:

1. The sale of advertising and sponsorships. Example: K-Swiss is the lead sponsor of Kournikova.com and its community on SportsMates (http://clubs.sportsmates.com/kournikova).

2. Services. Example: We host Gillette’s official community for the Gillette Young Guns NASCAR drivers on SportsMates (http://clubs.sportsmates.com/gilletteyoungguns).

3. We are in the process of finalizing agreements to handle advertising sales and business development for other online sports properties/communities.

In everything we do, our primary goal is to connect advertisers, sponsors and other sports industry players with fans in ways that are meaningful to all parties.

We use Google AdSense in some places and are preparing to fill remnant inventory with ads from one or more ad networks but thus far, we are most interested in dealing directly with advertisers and sponsors so that we can develop campaigns that go beyond the traditional CPM/CPC models.

Funding?

We have been primarily self-funded but did take a small amount of funding from the company’s outside director more than a year ago.

Are you currently looking for funding?

We are currently exploring the possibility of raising capital.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

SportsMates is built on a proprietary social networking platform that we developed from scratch. It is built on PHP and PostgreSQL and we’re using open-source technologies like memcached for performance and scaling.

What is your favorite feature on your website?

The message boards. We became involved with sports media back when the message board was the “social network” and message board communities are still one of the most popular ways sports fans connect and communicate online.

Because of this, we have made a considerable effort to make sure that our message board functionality is second-to-none. You can see the level of customization that we permit on some of the communities I linked to above.

Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

While I wouldn’t call this a bold prediction, I would note that the business of sport, like so many industries, is going through considerable change. Markets are fragmented and fans are often more difficult to reach and retain. I believe that companies who understand this and who can successfully help entities in the sports industry leverage technology to deal with these changes have the best opportunity for success.

Website: Fanboom

Interview With: Thomas Caporaso

What is your background and qualifications?

I am a seasoned online marketer with loyalty, continuity, subscription and membership experience.  My specialties include online member generation, product development, SEM/SEO, e-commerce, and new partner generation.  I have built programs for many leading brands like AIG, Victoria’s Secret, AAA, Citibank and AOL to help them either acquire, retain, or monetize their customer base.

I am also a passionate sports fan and follow many different teams and sports

What does your website do?

FanBoom puts the power of sports information in your hands. At FanBoom you can track all of your favorite teams, and writers (national and local), read the best of the sports blogs, and interact with robust community of fans of your favorite teams. Our goal is to build a portal of sports information that serve up Your Sports, Your Way, so you won’t have to go anywhere else.

How do you generate revenue? If through ads, what ad network do you use?

Our site currently generates revenue through ads.  We recently signed a deal to be in the Burst Media network.  We are also working with other solo sponsors.

How have your marketed your site?

We have created a blog network (blogs.FanBoom.com) that currently has six different sports (basketball, baseball, football, soccer, nascar, and hockey).  We also posts many of our articles to the large sports focused blog networks.  Many of these posts have generated significant organic traffic for us. Killerstartups.com also did a great review of our site.

Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?

We recently received a very small round of Angel investment

Are you currently looking for funding?

We are currently looking to help fund our marketing plans.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

Ruby on Rails

What is your favorite feature on your website?

My Boom – a very easy point and click menu that allows you to pick your sports and team so you only get the news related to the teams that you want to read about each day.

If you ran Espn, Cbssports, Cnnsi, etc, besides your website what sports website would you acquire?

I would focus on the team specific blogs that are written by passionate fans.  One of our strategies is to build out our blog network by working with these team specific blogs.  We like the angle that a passionate fan writes from which ultimately drives comments and feedback from people who read it. 

That back and forth discussion is what sports is all about.

Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

Yes – sports news and information will be completely managed by the consumer.  Sports fans don’t want to be spoon fed lots of irrelevant content, they want to have a deep and wide view of the teams that they follow.  We plan to be at the forefront of that conversion and completely hand over the keys to that content to the consumer who can do with it what they want.

Website:  Sports Tube

Interview With: Sion Davoudi

Is their more then one founder? If so, who are they?

The founders of sports-tube.com are Sion Davoudi and Michael Arakian.

What is your background and qualifications?

We are both graduates of California State University- Northridge and we have been involved in web design for years. Our passion for the internet and sports led us to create SportsTube.

What does your website do?

With SportsTube you can view the latest sports-related videos. Publicly share your videos to the world. Securely and privately show your videos and photos to your friends and family around the world. Chat with friends, communicate, watch video clips… and much, much more!

How do you generate revenue? If through ads, what ad network do you use?

We currently use Google Adsense, but are planning on branching out in the near future.

How have your marketed your site?

Word of mouth, other sports-related websites, and newspapers.

Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?

Self Funded

Are You currently looking for funding?

We are looking to find an angel investor in the near future.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

Ajax, PHP, JAVA, and FFMPEG for video conversion.

What is your favorite feature on your website?

Personally, I love the categories feature. I can watch videos of all the different sports.

Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

With technology and sports growing by the day, I would say the future for both is bright.