College Sports Television (CSTV), has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the Official College Sports Network (OCSN) from Student Advantage, Inc. The OCSN network is billed as the largest network of college sports news and information in any medium, attracting 7.5 million unique users and more than 167 million combined page views in October.
OCSN builds, hosts, maintains and markets official Web sites for more than 145 college athletic departments, conferences and related associations. Included in that are many schools with Division I hockey programs, such as Boston College, Providence, Miami and Cornell. OCSN also operates CollegeSports.com, the most-trafficked Web site devoted exclusively to college sports news and information. More than 1,000 collegiate administrators around the nation continuously feed news, information and statistics to OCSN’s sites.
“The acquisition of OCSN will accelerate our efforts to build the new home of college sports across multiple platforms,” said Brian Bedol, president and CEO of CSTV. “Regardless of the season, college sports fans log on to OCSN’s official sites multiple times each day, seeking out the latest news and information on their favorite teams. The OCSN network of sites gives CSTV a daily dialogue with the most passionate, valuable demographic in college sports, thus enabling us to provide enhanced value to our partner universities, conferences, distributors and sponsors.”
More than 50 percent of the college athletic departments that have NCAA Division I-A football are OCSN partners.
OCSN provides audio and video of games, coaches’ shows and press conferences for more than 50 schools through its “College Sports Pass” subscription service with RealNetworks.
OCSN sites also offer live in-game statistics for college basketball, football, baseball and softball through its “Gametracker” service, enabling fans to follow their favorite teams’ games in real time over the Internet.
