SendtoNews and ScreenScape Partner To Offer Sports Highlights
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
Canadian firms SendtoNews and ScreenScape Networks Inc. have entered into a content provider agreement that makes SendtoNews digital content available to ScreenScape customers through its SportStation platform on a pay-per-use basis.
The partnership will see ScreenScape offer two levels of SportStation programming. A standard package will supply daily videos featuring more than a dozen sports. A comprehensive package will supply these standard offerings along with a list of more premium offerings including a professionally edited and narrated SendtoNews Channel. ScreenScape customers can run SportStation content alongside their own branded messages and ads.
“ScreenScape is making it easier and more cost-effective for businesses to take charge of and network their screens and this is a key step in the evolution of a broader internet-of-screens that connects businesses across the globe,” says Sunny Hundle, SendtoNews’s director of strategic growth. “STN believes that premium sports content can be translated via any medium, and therefore has a keen interest in place-based media. Our partnership with ScreenScape allows us to take this kind of programming further and offer it more broadly through ScreenScape technology which is opening up the market to businesses of all sizes, on just about any budget.”
In the fall of 2014, ScreenScape launched ScreenScape Connect, a new plug-and-play device and supporting software platform that turns any TV into a connected digital sign. ScreenScape supplies the device, with no upfront cost, on an extended subscription, thus reducing both the cost and the complexity of operating a digital signage network. The device plugs into the HDMI port of the TV and connects via WiFi to the internet. Once online it can be updated, monitored and managed over the internet using ScreenScape.com.
The new partnership with ScreenScape leverages STN’s growing strength in the area of digital content services. ScreenScape’s internet-based technology allows businesses to create an engaging and custom-tailored video experience which the business owners can brand, finely tune and control for their own purposes. Timely news programming, in this case the professional videos created and curated daily by STN for consumption via the internet, will provide a library of individual video feeds that customers can choose from and use to fill out parts of their own customized playlist.
“By joining forces with SendtoNews, we are able to offer our customers a range of new programming options,” says Mark Hemphill, ScreenScape CEO. “This is content STN is well known for and great at producing. The feeds are fully managed and served up daily which helps our customers keep their programming fresh and full of engaging content.”
ScreenScape offers software that helps businesses connect and control screens over the internet. Brand marketers and retail networks use the technology to publish digital signage content on screens inside their stores. Health clinics, university campuses and other kinds of venues use it to engage and entertain their visitors.
SendtoNews is a fast growing syndicator of sports video highlights. IT began developing its sports highlights video distribution concept during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games, and since early 2013 has secured exclusive digital rights with professional sports leagues and distribution agreements with newspapers across Canada and the U.S. The company is now the exclusive short form digital rights holder for the NFL, NASCAR, PGA Tour and Major League Baseball, and more than 70 other top sports leagues and organizations around the world. Since January 2015, SendtoNews has also installed video players on Tribune, Hearst and Gannett newspaper sites.
These rights-protected sports video clips enable publishers to tap new sources of ad revenue. Under its business model, SendtoNews shares 40% of ad sales revenue with its newspaper partners while the remainder is shared in exclusive agreements with its sports partners. SendtoNews claims that viewership growth in 2014 over 2013 was 1,600%, while revenues leaped 2,766% in 2014 year over year.
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