CBSSports.com

CBSSports.com
Web address www.cbssports.com
Commercial? Yes
Type of site
 Sports
Registration Available
Available in English
Owner CBS Corporation
Created by Michael Levy
Alexa rank
 positive decrease 588 (April 2014)[1]
Current status Active

CBSSports.com (formerly CBS SportsLine.com) was founded in 1994 as SportsLine USA, and today is a CBS-owned website that provides sports scores, news, statistics, live and on-demand video, mobile apps, e-commerce, fantasy sports products, services, and information.[2] Headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, CBSSports.com is a popular American sports websites, along with Yahoo! Sports, ESPN.com, and SI.com. It provides coverage of the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA), National Hockey League (NHL), NCAA College Basketball and Football, NASCAR plus many other professional, college, and high school sports.

CBSSports.com also features many writers and columnists such as Gregg Doyel, Jason La Canfora, Bruce Feldman, Jon Heyman, Dennis Dodd, Gary Parrish and Tony Barnhart, plus fantasy sports authorities like Scott White, Sergio Gonzalez, Jamey Eisenberg, Nando Di Fino and Dave Richard.

CBSSports.com is wholly owned by the CBS Corporation, a mass media company with operations in nearly every field of media and entertainment, including broadcast, cable, and local television production and syndication, radio and music, advertising on out-of-home media, publishing, and interactive media. CBSSports.com operates as a unit of CBS Interactive and is the online presence of CBS Sports. The CBSSports.com portfolio of brands includes CBSSports.com, online high-school sports leader MaxPreps, and the CBSSports.com College Network, a group of approximately 175 official athletic websites for colleges and universities across the United States which are produced by CBSSports.com. CBS Corporation (then Viacom) purchased SportsLine USA in 2004.[3] On August 22, 2007, CBS SportsLine.com changed its name to CBSSports.com to better unify the CBS Sports brand across its television, online and mobile platforms.

History

SportsLine

SportsLine USA, Inc., a Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based company, was founded by technology veteran Michael Levy in February 1994. The online service dedicated exclusively to sports information, entertainment and merchandise, officially launched the first generation of its service on June 1, 1995. SportsLine's service became available on the Internet's World Wide Web through commercial online services or through direct Internet access at http://www.sportsline.com.

At SportsLine, Levy forged alliances with CBS Sports, AOL, the NFL, the NBA, MLB, the PGA Tour, the NCAA, various players’ associations and many superstar athletes including Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, Joe Namath, John Elway, Jerry Rice, Mike Schmidt and Wayne Gretzky. SportsLine’s initial venture funding was through Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers. Subsequent private investors included Reuters, TCI, US West and NY Life. Mr. Levy took SportsLine public in 1997 raising $32 million. In 1998, SportsLine raised $150 million in a secondary offering and in 1999 raised $150 million in a convertible bond offering. During the Internet boom years from 1998 to early 2000, SportsLine’s market cap routinely exceeded $1 billion.

CBS Purchase

In December 2004, Viacom Inc. announced that it had finalized its acquisition of SportsLine.com, one of the industry's leading online sports media companies. Viacom Inc., a leading global media company that at the time included CBS, agreed to pay $1.75 per share for the roughly 26.6 million shares in SportsLine that it did not already control. SportsLine had been actively seeking a buyer since May, as it was losing money and owed payments to Viacom, which ran a co-branded site with SportsLine.

Viacom had been SportsLine's largest customer for a number of years. In March 1997, SportsLine USA struck a marketing partnership with CBS Sports to create CBS SportsLine, which was billed as "the nation's premier online media service devoted exclusively to sports information, entertainment, and merchandise." The sports content company published the CBS SportsLine site for the media conglomerate's television subsidiary, CBS. In addition to providing sports news and related content, SportsLine also maintained CBS' fantasy sports Web sites, an increasingly popular and potentially lucrative online media niche. In the previous year, SportsLine had signed a deal with Google to use the search giant's technology and sponsored advertising links on its Web sites. The company originally operated as a division of CBS Sports, reporting to Sean McManus, President, CBS Sports.

Fantasy Sports

CBSSports.com got into the fantasy sports business early on, producing games in 1997. In 1998, CBSSports.com partnered with Daedalus World Wide Corporation, a producer of online fantasy sports products. CBSSports.com would acquire Daedalus World Wide Corporation in 1999, using their products as the basis of its fantasy sports business going forward. Initially, CBSSports.com charged a subscription fee to play its fantasy games. However, in July 2000 the company decided to drop all fees associated with its fantasy sports games and starting offering the products free of charge. The switch caused a massive amount of sign-ups for its fantasy sports games. However, the move to free fantasy sports products did not last long as just two years later CBSSports.com switched back to a subscription-based model to run their fantasy sports business. Behind the popularity of the CBSSports.com Commissioner product, which has been voted the best fantasy sports league manager service by the FSTA in eight of the last nine years, fantasy sports are a significant portion of CBSSports.com's business.

About CBS Interactive

CBS Interactive, a division of CBS Corporation, is an online content network for information and entertainment. With 200 million people visiting its properties each month, it is a top 10 Web property globally and a top 5 Web property in the U.S. in terms of unique video viewers. Its portfolio of brands, include CNET, CBS.com, CBSSports.com, GameSpot, TV.com, BNET, CBS RADIO, and Last.fm, span popular categories such as technology, entertainment, sports, news and business.

Key Dates

Notable Accomplishments

News

Expert Columnists

RapidReports

This news feature is updated in real time on cbssports.com consisting of 32 correspondents in each NFL city to report the news as it happens.

Awards

Freshman of the Year

Since 2006, the CBSSports.com Freshman of the Year award is given yearly to the top college football newcomer.[13] Previous Winners

Fantasy

Traditional Games

Challenge Games/Brackets

Awards from Fantasy Sports Trade Association(FSTA)

Fantasy Writers

References

  1. ↑ "Cbssports.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-04-01.
  2. ↑ CBSSports.com Profile from Hoover's
  3. ↑ Viacom Purchases All of SportsLine.com
  4. ↑ "Sportsline USA kicks off service on June 1 with Joe Namath promotion." (Press release). CBS Sports. May 30, 1995. Retrieved Oct 19, 2010.
  5. ↑ CBS Sports (March 5, 1997). "CBS Sports and SportsLine USA Announce Strategic Alliance" (Press release). CBS Sports. Retrieved Oct 19, 2010.
  6. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/04/business/04adco.html
  7. ↑ CBS Corporation acquires MaxPreps - CBSSports.com
  8. ↑ CBS Sports (November 6, 1995). "Sportsline USA ranked #1 sports service on the web" (Press release). CBS Sports. Retrieved October 19, 2010.
  9. ↑ "Michael Levy named Florida Entrepreneur of the Year" (Press release). June 27, 1995. Retrieved October 19, 2010.
  10. ↑ "CBS Sportsline scores 1998 Webby Award" (Press release). March 9, 1998. Retrieved October 19, 2010.
  11. ↑ CBS Sports (December 16, 1998). "CBS Sportsline named Best Sports Site" (Press release). Retrieved October 22, 2010.
  12. ↑ CBS Corporation | CBSSPORTS.COM A WINNER AT THE 33rd ANNUAL SPORTS EMMY® AWARDS
  13. ↑ NCAA College Football - CBSSports.com News, Scores, Stats, Schedule and BCS Rankings

External links