Thursday, June 5, 2008

Obscure sports, colleges are YouCastr’s target

By Christopher Calnan

Imagine creating a business model based on web traffic garnered from live bowling broadcasts or women’s water polo games.

Sound dubious? YouCastr Inc., a Boston-based startup that operates a social networking website for sports fans, is focusing on such niche sporting events.

Let the national television stations carry the NBA and Major League Baseball. YouCastr targets fans of high school sports, Australian semipro hockey and University of Alabama women’s softball. And investors and customers have decided to dive into the pool with the company.

YouCastr recently signed an agreement to carry Dartmouth College football, hockey and baseball games. Previously, the college’s radio station, Dartmouth Broadcasting, included a link to game broadcasts on its website, general manager Pavel Sotskov said.

But YouCastr will enable Dartmouth to archive all of its games and track the number of listeners as well as their locations — valuable information that could previously only be accessed for an additional fee, Sotskov said. Also,will provide the tools for listeners to participate in live online chats with game broadcasters and other fans.

“This will be an opportunity to be a lot closer to the action,” Sotskov said.

Co-founder Ariel Diaz calls such activities “long-tail sports,” referring to the long-tail concept — targeting the large number of consumers looking for narrowly focused, specialized content, who on aggregate are as plentiful as consumers seeking more mainstream content.

Basing his business on such a model is possible because fans of the niche sporting events are under-served by traditional media, leaving the door wide open for YouCastr to step into the void, Diaz said.

“There really is no other outlet for these sports,” he said. “And if there’s only one place to get the content — that’s where they’ll go.”

In addition to live and archived broadcasts of sports events, YouCastr hosts blogs and online chats for events. Diaz declined to disclose the website’s number of visitors or its revenue.
The company, which launched last year, generates revenue from advertising and fees from users who pay for a platform, called YouCastr Pro, offering higher quality sound.

Diaz, previously a consultant at Lochridge & Co., a Boston-based consulting firm, said YouCastr has attracted investment totaling more than $100,000 from five angel investors (two in the Boston area). He expects to receive venture capital by the end of the year, now that he is armed with the experience of serving fans of niche sports.

“It gives us a clearer path to growth because now we have continued validation and an initial experience that we can build off,” he said.