ESPN Founder Hopes To Score With Sports Site

By Mike Sachoff - Fri, 09/07/2007 - 14:20

The Founder of ESPN, Bill Rasmussen, launched today CollegeFanz.com, an interactive site focused on college sports and their fans.

The site will be devoted to Division II and III schools and hopes to highlight sports and teams that have been largely under-represented. The site will carry sports content, such as videos, photos, highlights and general sports information. Users will be able to create a personalized homepage and customize it with logos and school colors.

"In 1979, satellite technology created an opportunity for ESPN to deliver sports around the clock that created legions of sports fans," said Rasmussen, Founder and CEO of CollegeFanz.com.

"Twenty-eight years later, online technology presents the opportunity to deliver yet another layer of sports information and entertainment to millions of passionate fans looking for more scores, more news, more videos and more photos from their favorite college or university."

CollegeFanz will also have social networking features that will allow users to upload images and videos to their pages and search for other fans. Fans will also be able to create blogs and groups, and invite other fans to online forums and talk shows.

The site will charge $4.95 per month for access to the content, but will also offer free services.

"CollegeFanz.com is laser focused on the fan experience. Enhancing and fulfilling this dynamic experience for students and alumni is our mission," concluded Rasmussen.

News Tags: College Sports, ESPN, Sports

About the author:
Mike is a staff writer for WebProNews.

1 Comment

By Don Melo (WPN reader) - Fri, 09/07/2007 - 18:32

Lack of Features

Seems like many of the items that CollegeFanz wants to provide are missing such as "social networking features that will allow users to upload images and videos to their pages and search for other fans. Fans will also be able to create blogs and groups, and invite other fans to online forums and talk shows." At this point there is not much to do directly on the site but create a profile. I know it is a beta but it seems like even their sports talk features end up leading users away from their site. Maybe they should license some of the functionality of existing sports social sites such as FreeTheFan http://www.freethefan.com - to incorporate social networking, forums, games and video. Then people would stick around to talk about college sports.