Sport and Story announced the launch of its program-specific platforms for college sports fans. Victor Vitarelli, chief operating officer of Sport and Story, joined Cheddar News to discuss.

Sport & Story Launches Programming for College Sports Fans

well, we are in the golden age of streaming, but with so many options, we can spend more time looking for content than we might actually be watching it in college sports. It can be difficult to remember which conference has rights deals with which networks, plus many fans want programs specific coverage, instead of relying on national broadcasts for team analysis, that's where sport and story comes in. The company already launching five platforms, along with university partners offering behind the scenes access for mega fans. I'm joined now by victor, Viterelli, chief operating officer of sport and story victor. Thanks so much for coming on. Talk to me more about how your company is working with universities to give fans what they want. Sure, so, first christian, thank you very much for having me. Um there has been a trend over time, especially with sports content, um going from national networks to regional and conference networks, and now ultimately team networks, and I use the word network very carefully there, because what ultimately we we want is for athletic departments to view themselves as media companies and ultimately take advantage over time of everything that comes along with being a media company. So what can fans expect these mega fans victor they want to know. So it's it's really about uh super serving the fan base. Um you can watch a national network for a very long time and not see a story on your team. Um And so what we're doing is allowing that fan base to get the ultimate access to their teams and uh and and the student athletes that they want to follow. How does N. I. L. Factor into this? I thought it was interesting what you said victor that basically these athletic departments might be wise for them as you work with them to become media companies in and of themselves. And I would imagine that with N. I. L. That might benefit them to some extent. It does. Um you know, this is there's obviously a lot going on still with with N. I. L. Um but I would say that uh overall this is a very disruptive time in in college sports, perhaps the most disruptive in the history of college sports with NHL and with some significant conference realignment. So what athletic departments are really looking for right now is ways to build and enhance their brands and content is really the best way for them to do that. What's the commitment from the athletes victor? Are the athletes on board at these schools? Yeah, they they are, we've um so we partnered directly with the university um and that gives us the access to the athletes and what we've found across the board is the athletes understand the value of storytelling and the value of Brand Bill themselves. So they're very eager to cooperate. They're they're they're giving ideas, They want to be a part of this because they want their stories out there which ultimately gives them a chance to build their brand and potentially capitalize on N. I. O. I want to pull up the full screen that we showed earlier about which universities victor you're partnering with to start here, Arkansas Oklahoma state, L S U south Carolina Mississippi state as well. How did these partnerships come about? Why are these the schools that you're launching with? Well, uh they were first in line um I think that it's uh it's no surprise that that there's a lot of sec schools represented there. Um They they were very forward thinking conference made up of very forward thinking schools, um but as as we've launched these products, uh the line is starting to to form um people understand and realized the value of directly accessing their fans of course, that direct fan engagement is important. What can fans expect to pay victor, will this be free to them, or will they need to pay up to get this exclusive access to some of their favorite athletes and maybe even some of their friends on campus? Sure, so our price range goes from 7 99 to 28 99 a month at uh depending depending on the school. Um the the idea is that that these platforms um give an opportunity for fans to engage with content behind the paywall as well as in front of a paywall, so um the fans come to these platforms and can engage with quite a wide variety of, of content, but also these are these are member benefit platforms. So in addition to the content as a subscriber as a member to to one of these platforms, you you get additional member benefits, it could be discounts on merchandise or um access to premium tickets. Um and these are really fan affinity platforms that provide everything that that members need to be great fans. What are the university's victor might be in the pipeline for viewers watching? Well, I will tell you, we have a lot of of potential partners across a lot of different conferences and not just even the Power Five, we're seeing a lot of interest outside of the Power Five and even even some FCS schools, male and female athletes, we're both getting access. Absolutely. And that's one of the real values and benefits of these platforms. Univ, cities typically just don't have the resources to cover non revenue generating sports and we're able to provide additional resources and tell the great stories that are out there in olympic sports as well as as in uh female sports. And we've done we've had some really good successes with that over over the past several months. All right, Victor Viterelli, chief operating officer at Sport and Story victor, Thank you