- CBSSports.com
-
CBSSports.com URL www.cbssports.com Commercial? yes Type of site Sports Registration available Available language(s) English Owner CBS Created by Michael Levy Alexa rank 
433 (November 2011[update])[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 it is considered one of the top sports websites, along with ESPN.com and Yahoo! Sports. It provides coverage of the National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, NCAA College Basketball and College Football, plus many other professional, college, and high school sports.
CBSSports.com also features many writers, and columnists such as Gregg Doyel, Mike Freeman, Dennis Dodd, Gary Parrish and Ray Ratto, plus fantasy sports experts like Scott White, Sergio Gonzalez, Jamey Eisenberg, and Dave Richard. Veteran Sportscasters Lesley Visser, Spencer Tillman, and Clark Kellogg also write columns for CBSSports.com.
CBSSports.com is wholly owned by the CBS Corporation, a mass media company with operations in virtually 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.
Contents
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, Mr. 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 of 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 of 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 of 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 didn't 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
- June 1, 1995- Sportsline USA kicks off service. [4]
- March 5, 1997- CBS Sports and SportsLine USA joined forces to create CBS SportsLine. [5]
- June 26, 2000- SportsLine.com, Inc. Redesigns Its Flagship Site, CBS SportsLine.com
- August 2, 2004- Viacom Agrees To Acquire SportsLine.com, Inc.
- December 10, 2004- Viacom Completes Acquisition Of SportsLine.com
- August 2, 2005- CBS SportsLine.com created a college fantasy football game that was offered free of charge starting with the 2005 season. The company was the first major fantasy sports entity to enter the marketplace with a collegiate fantasy football game.
- August 22, 2007- CBS SportsLine.com becomes CBSSports.com
- January 15, 2008- CBSSports.com Ends 2007 on a Traffic Streak; Starts 2008 with a Site Redesign
Notable Accomplishments
- November 6, 1995- SportsLine USA was ranked as the #1 sports service on the Web by Interactive Sports Wire. SportsLine USA received an overall rating of 86 percent, a full eight percent in front of ESPNet. [6]
- June 27, 1997- SportsLine USA, Inc., CEO Michael Levy was named 1997 Florida Entrepreneur of the Year® by a panel representing Ernst & Young Entrepreneurial Services LLP. Levy, 50, won in the "Emerging" category for companies less than five years old. [7]
- March 9,1998- SportsLine USA, Inc., publisher of CBS SportsLine (cbs.sportsline.com), the Internet's leading sports Web site, announced that CBS SportsLine was awarded the prestigious 1998 Webby Award in the sports category. [8]
- December 16,1998- SportsLine USA, Inc. announced today that its popular CBS SportsLine Web site (cbs.sportsline.com) has been named "Best Sports Site" by NetGuide (www.netguide.com). NetGuide 99's "The Year's Best of the Web" recognizes exceptional sites in 22 separate categories ranging from Best Chat site to Best News site to Best Sports site. [9]
- September 26, 2000- Dennis Dodd, CBS SportsLine.com's college football senior writer, earned a first-place award in the annual Football Writers Association of America (FWAA) Best Writing Contest for the second consecutive year.
- January 8, 2008- The winners of the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy® Awards were announced and CBSSports.com and CBS Sports were honored for their production of March Madness on Demand, the online video experience that provides live streaming video of the NCAA® Division I Men's Basketball Championship.
News
Expert Columnists
- Mike Freeman- National Columnist
- Gregg Doyel- National Columnist
- Ray Ratto- National Columnist
- Gwen Knapp- National Columnist
- Clark Judge- NFL
- Pete Prisco- NFL
- Charley Casserly- NFL
- Dennis Dodd- College Football
- Spencer Tillman- College Football
- J. Darin Darst- College Football
- Scott Miller- MLB
- Danny Knobler- MLB
- Larry Dobrow- MLB
- Gary Parrish- College Basketball
- Clark Kellogg- College Basketball
- Lesley Visser- College Basketball
- Ken Berger- NBA
- Steve Elling- Golf
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.[10] Previous Winners
- 2010 - Marcus Lattimore, South Carolina
- 2009 - Dion Lewis, Pitt
- 2008 - Jacquizz Rodgers, Oregon State
- 2007 - Michael Crabtree, Texas Tech
- 2006 - P.J. Hill, Wisconsin
Fantasy
Traditional Games
- Free Leagues (NFL,NBA,College Football,MLB)- CBSSports.com offers the most comprehensive free game on the market for beginners to learn the most popular fantasy game in the world! First-timers and inexperienced users can experience the nuances of fantasy sports and master all the great features CBSSports.com Fantasy Football offers in a more relaxed and less competitive atmosphere. Free leagues are not eligible for league champion prizes. The College Football game is the only one available on a major sports website.
- Premium Leagues (NFL,NBA,MLB)- The pay games offer better competition with the chance to win league prizes for the more dedicated and experienced players.
- Commissioner Leagues (NFL,NBA,College Football,MLB)- Customizable league settings
Challenge Games/Brackets
- NFL Game Pick 'em Contest- Pick the winners of every NFL each week competing against experts or friends.
- Franchise Football- Build a football franchise on Facebook
- Office Pool Manager- Choose picks with spreads, confidence weighting or in a survivor format
- College Bowl Pick' Em- Pick the Bowl game winners & get a chance to win the $10,000 Grand Prize
- Bracket Manager- Men's college basketball tournament bracket competition
- Round by Round Brackets- With each new round of the tournament, Round by Round brackets brings you a brand new chance to make picks and win cash. Six rounds equal six chances to win!
Awards from Fantasy Sports Trade Association(FSTA)
- 2001 Best Fantasy Football League Manager- CBS SportsLine.com commissioner
- 2001 Best Fantasy Football Big Business of the Year
- 2002 Best Fantasy Football League Manager
- 2002 Best Fantasy Baseball Commissioner Service
- 2003 Best Fantasy Baseball League Manager
- 2004 Best Commissioner
- 2004 Best Online Marketing Campaign
- 2006 Best Online Service
- 2008 Best Draft Style Contest
- 2009 Best Fantasy Commissioner League Management Product
- 2009 Best Online/Mock Draft Room
- Lifetime Achievement Award- SportsLine.com Commissioner
Fantasy Writers
- Ross Devonport
- Jamey Eisenberg
- Sergio Gonzalez
- Michael Hurcomb
- Jeff Lippman
- Al Melchior
- Dave Richard
- Scott White
References
- ^ "Cbssports.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/CBSSports.com. Retrieved 2011-11-02.
- ^ CBSSports.com Profile from Hoover's
- ^ Viacom Purchases All of SportsLine.com
- ^ CBS Sports (May 30, 1995). "SPORTSLINE USA KICKS OFF SERVICE ON JUNE 1 WITH JOE NAMATH PROMOTION.". Press Release. http://www.cbssports.com/info/aboutus/press/1995/jlaunch. Retrieved Oct 19, 2010.
- ^ CBS Sports (March 5, 1997). "CBS Sports and SportsLine USA Announce Strategic Alliance". Press Release. http://www.cbssports.com/info/aboutus/press/1997/cbspress. Retrieved Oct 19, 2010.
- ^ CBS Sports (Nov. 6, 1995). "SPORTSLINE USA RANKED #1 SPORTS SERVICE ON THE WEB". Press Release. http://www.cbssports.com/info/aboutus/press/1995/numberone. Retrieved Oct 19, 2010.
- ^ CBS Sports (June 27, 1995). "MICHAEL LEVY NAMED FLORIDA ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR". Press Release. http://www.cbssports.com/info/aboutus/press/1997/mentrap. Retrieved Oct 19, 2010.
- ^ CBS Sports (March 9, 1998). "CBS SPORTSLINE SCORES 1998 WEBBY AWARD". Press Release. http://www.cbssports.com/info/aboutus/press/1998/webby. Retrieved Oct 19, 2010.
- ^ CBS Sports (Dec. 16, 1998). "CBS SPORTSLINE NAMED BEST SPORTS SITE". Press Release. http://www.cbssports.com/info/aboutus/press/1998/netguide. Retrieved Oct 22, 2010.
- ^ http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/freshmanwatch
External links
Webby Awards Award Nominee, 2001 award in the category SportsAwards ceremonies Categories:- CBS Corporation subsidiaries
- CBS Sports
- Sport websites
- Website stubs
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
