The President of VSporto, Keith Jasper, took the time to update the Sports Techie community blog about their newest Internet radio app made for University of Alabama sports content. He shared company data about their properties Internet performance numbers and offered our readers analytical insight for the month of September. Their recently launched apps for Alabama and Auburn fans resulted in 6 times the amount of traffic that Bulldog Sports Radio and Rebel Sports Radio and their listeners produced.
BAMA Sports Radio
The Alabama Crimson Tide 24-hour radio iOS app is part of the VSporto network of over 2.5 million listeners. VSporto has now streamed over 1.5 million hours of college sports content. It turns out that September was a record month. Keith shared that, “We had over 500,000 users in September.” He added, “Users streamed over 342,000 hours of audio in September.” A National Championship is estimated to grow a fan base by 200,000 to 400,000 fans in a year.
Rapid fans in Alabama fans have been cheering on the program since play began in 1892. Their 15 national championships, is the most of any current FBS program. Fan expectations began with Bama legendary coach Bear Bryant winning six National Championships. Current Coach, Nick Saban, guided Alabama to the 2009, 2011 and 2012 BCS and AP National Championships, earning him the title of first coach in college football history to win a national championship with two different FBS schools. Another historical fact is Saban and Bryant are the only coaches to win an SEC championship at two different universities.
All that fan loyalty led to 34,000 app installs in one day for Alabama compared to about 6,000 app installs for Ol’ Miss. The massive download spike was due to above normal fan excitement, new listeners and busy gameday radio listeners. In one weekend, they produced original programming for Auburn vs. Mississippi, top ranked Alabama vs. Texas A&M, and Ol’ Miss vs. Texas.
As a result, both of their new apps were ranked simultaneously in the iPhone Top 25 sports apps, only other entities with that were the NFL, ESPN, and Yahoo Sports. College sports fans are indeed a big business.
One clear reason for this success is their On-Demand feature that allows fans control of what, how, and when they listen. The option to listen to full-length archived shows from start to finish from whenever you log on is popular. Bama Sports Radio also has a play-pause button, allowing fans to “freeze” live events, go get lunch, take restroom breaks or breakdown why the kids are hollering about not sharing the Xbox, when they’re ready on a mobile device or on a PC. Text Connect is a new feature that gives fans the ability to interact with the shows by text messaging hosts seamlessly from the app, while still listening to the audio.
SportsBiz
Their custom content model for radio is working for web radio fans that hunger for team stats, talk, opinions, smack talkers, historic information and college recruiting. AM/FM sportstalk is outplayed, replicated and a cookie cutter platform. The average time spent listening by their listeners is 33-35 minutes; this is much higher than the FM and AM radio norms of 5-9 minutes.
The sports business model they follow starts with no audience and no affiliation with the college, no one is listening to their sports talk coverage and content yet thus their user base starts at zero. They build up the user base like they did with the Mississippi intuitions and then approach each university to see how they can best help them with sportsbiz objectives by utilizing their listeners and and core of beat writers, scouts and bloggers.
Coordination with a school’s athletic department is a big step for engineering purposes and the possibility of working with the school and its facilities to assist with sales, ticketing and merchandise, alumni and clubs, and fund raising.
Jasper is on a west coast swing, traveling throughout the Bay Area and meeting potential partners. The Silicon Valley has to be impressed as I am at how much dedication and traction they have with their sports technology startup. Good things happen to hard working and original thinkers, and VSports fits into that category. I expect you will hear about them on the radio at your favorite college during football season. Increasing a college basketball presence is on the biz dev calendar for season.
I could sense the excitement from Keith when we discussed those days Auburn and Alabama lite up the App Store sports category for a five day run that saw the Auburn reach a highest ranking of 24 while the Crimson Tide surged all the way to #11. The Bulldogs Sports Radio app only made it to the top 30 for one day only. Producing Internet radio for the Alabama special fan base was best reflected in the massive spikes in downloads and users over one day or month.
The vision for the company is better radio. Jasper is there to build out the vision of the company. They are content builders. Keith could not get audio of his favorite team while in Mississippi. Jasper is a diehard Buffalo Bills fan. We both have Fred Jackson on our fantasy teams.
After their launch, they went into stability mode to be sure they could handle the sports management requirements of being a reliable and consistent source of 24 hour content. Network was on the ground, a street team. Next steps are to establish more channels next football season. They plan radio launches around National Championships and opening day. The company is entertaining media and sponsor partnerships.
The management team is getting ready to announce a distribution partnership with TuneIn Radio, which will give people access to their streams in automobile app display platforms. The XM radio streams have 55 million users.
- GM
- BMW
- Volvo
- Honda
- Audi
- Toyota
- Nissan
- Hyundai
- Suzuki
- Subaru
- Ford
- Tesla
- Land Rover
- Chrysler
- Volkswagen
- Mercedes
VSporto “Click To Anything” Ad Platform Demo
Social Media
- Bulldog Sports Radio Twitter – https://twitter.com/BulldogsRadio
- Rebel Sports Radio Twitter – https://twitter.com/RebelSportRadio
- Bama Sports Radio Twitter – https://twitter.com/BamaSportsRadio
- War Eagle Sports Radio Twitter – https://twitter.com/WarEagleRadio
Sports Techie, Crimson Tide collegiate sports is on a level to itself thanks to the domination of the football team on a National level. The radio Internet sports business model VSporto invented is scaling according to plan. I asked about an exit strategy. Keith responded by saying he wants to, “Build out the company.” I suspect Keith will never make it there because some media giant will gobble them up because of their continued successes and corporate growth.
When I first got started with Sports 2000 and the Seattle Seahawks in 1996, one of the first schools I contacted was Michigan State where Saban happened to be head coach. I gave them as much material about our revolutionary Windows 95 expert game planning system as I had and often wonder how much of an impact it had on Nick as his coaching style evolved after becoming the Alabama coach. His eight-year contract totaling US$32 million made him one of the highest paid football coaches, professional or college, in the United States at that time, not bad for an Ultra Sports Techie. VSporto made a wise sport business decision to execute their business plan with Alabama.
Alabama is off this week but be sure to download their apps and listen to their other college sports radio shows over the Internet like some our readers did on transistor radios in the good old days.
Thanks again to Keith for reconnecting. VSporto, Your Team, Your Radio.
I will see ya when I see ya, THE Sports Techie @THESportsTechie – http://twitter.com/THESportsTechie
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