ESPN is going all out in an effort to continue to ramp up its online presence. After announcing ScoreCenter, a centralized online destination for sports scores from every stadium and arena across the globe, ESPNU is now looking to students, professors and athletic departments at 20 different universities to help with sports coverage.
[img src="" caption="" credit="" alt=""]This initiative, named the ESPNU Campus Connection, is specifically to help get more user-generated content on ESPNU's website, and will be accepting video clips with play-by-play analysis, sideline reporting, and production of televised events on ESPNU. There's also the chance for the provided content to be distributed across other ESPN channels, sites and magazines. To get the ball rolling, ESPNU will be doling out assignments to the participating universities.
I think this is one initiative that will work, and work really well, especially if ESPN extends this out to smaller schools in addition to the 20 universities it's starting out with. ESPN has a very dedicated audience, both online and offline. The chance to become an ESPN commentator or content provider is a great opportunity for students and athletic departments, and ESPN will probably get a good amount of the user-generated content it's looking for. FOX started a similar initiative for its news programming, in partnership with the Palestra. Combined with ESPN's involvement with athletic sports networks and free distribution of its content over the web, ESPN is establishing its extended online empire.
[via paid content]