Comcast has partnered with CBS Interactive to distribute content from CBS’s high school sports site, MaxPreps.com, to Comcast’s cable facilities in Houston.
Throughout the 2009-10 school year, MaxPreps.com will produce hundreds of short-form features on high school sports teams and athletes from the Houston area and then make them available on demand on Channel One.
“Through video on demand, viewers are able to access exclusive programming they can’t get anywhere else,” said Tony Speller, senior vice president for Comcast’s Houston region. Comcast digital cable subscribers will be offered content for free via the Get Local section on Comcast Houston’s on-demand platform.
This summer, the Sports Illustrated Group and CBS Interactive’s CBSSports.com struck a distribution deal whereby SI.com would carry MaxPreps content. The high school sports site also became the engine for print and digital versions of Sports Illustrated’s Faces in the Crowd franchise.
High school sports are a fast-growing online segment, with News Corp.’s Scout.com, Yahoo’s Rivals.com and Sports Illustrated’s Takkle.com all competing with MaxPreps.com. ComScore MediaMetrix reported in September that MaxPreps.com attracted 1.8 million visits to its Web site, up 77 percent in one year.
MaxPreps, sponsored by the U.S. Air Force, recently launched a mobile site, which includes schedules, scores, rosters, standings, rankings and stats for each of the 16,225 high school football teams across the United States.
