• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, April 3, 2006

Extending their reach into niche collegiate markets, ESPN.com and ESPNU Friday announced a partnership with XOS technologies, which manages sports Web sites for about 100 schools nationwide.

The plan is for each company to boost its own value by sharing their respective game coverage, despite having very different business models; access to game coverage on XOS-hosted sites is subscription-based, whereas ESPN.com is ad-supported.

"This is not about a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow right now," said ESPNU Vice President and General Manager Burke Magnus. "We're focused on building each other's businesses; building the ESPN brand presence at a more local level; driving traffic to our site."

And while the agreement allows for sharing of online news, information, video, and audio assets--as well as cross-promotion between their properties--it does not mean that ESPN can now give its viewers carte blanche access to XOS's sites and visa versa.

Rather, the companies will have to determine on a case-by-case basis which games can be streamed over which Web sites. To illustrate the deal's potential, Magnus gave the example of the college basketball's 40-game National Invitation Tournament, of which ESPN is the exclusive rights holder. If one of the schools that XOS represents is playing in the tournament, ESPN might agree to let that school's XOS-supported Web site stream the game.

"We have relationships with every major conference or division in the country, but this partnership allows us to drill deeper, and have a very local presence," Magnus added.

Craig Rosenshein, XOS vice president of marketing, expressed enthusiasm over the deal even though the partnership will demand a great deal of effort. "We're changing as the whole business model is changing around us," said Rosenshein. "We have to model this thing out with ESPN to make it work."

Rosenshein is no stranger to the field, having served as director of marketing at CBS SportsLine for nine years before joining XOS last August.

In a similar deal, ESPN rival CBS acquired the college sports network CSTV for $325 million at the beginning of the year. CBS and CSTV have worked together since 2004, when CSTV launched March Madness on Demand, allowing consumers to watch live CBS Sports NCAA Tournament broadcasts for the subscription $20 fee.

Schools and conferences served by XOS include Duke University, Louisiana State University, University of Minnesota, and University of Arizona, among others.