Jacked Sports Signs New Syndication Deals With Versus, Tribune Co.

Jacked is continuing the commercial rollout of its 11-month-old interactive SportsTop product, signing an expanded syndication deal with Versus as well as a new pact with Tribune Co. to link into the company's TV, radio, Web and newspaper holdings. The new multi-year Versus pact adds Pac-10, Big 12 and Mountain West college football and Mountain West college basketball to a prior deal that linked the network's coverage of the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs with Jacked's online offering of stats, images, videos, news, commerce links and other content to pair with the TV broadcasts. The Tribune deal, meanwhile, is designed in part as a multi-platform ad play in which an advertiser, for example, can now execute a single campaign within Tribune-owned KTLA-CW's coverage of the Clippers, the print and online sports pages of the L.A. Times, and Jacked coverage of Clippers games that will in part feature content from those other spots. The Tribune execution will begin later this summer with KTLA coverage of Raiders preseason games. "Where a lot of the early days were focused on the product and overall user experience, we're now continuing to be more aggressive in developing the ad sales component and commercially exploiting this," said Jacked CEO Bryan Biniak. Financial terms were not disclosed, but the deals generally involved revenue sharing of advertising sales generated around the SportsTop product. "This is another step in an arduous process that will ultimately see all this information converge from two screens to one," said KTLA VP/Programming & Marketing John Moczulski. Jacked debuted last fall with NBC's coverage of Notre Dame football, and has since supported more than 4,500 games across every major sport.
By Eric Fisher, Staff Writer, SportsBusiness Journal

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