Jacked, Inc. â„¢ and Big Ten Network See Success with Interactive SportsTop for Big Ten Football and Basketball
Cross-Platform Integration between TV Broadcaster and Web site Drives 40 minute User Engagement
SANTA MONICA, Calif. – Oct. 1, 2008 – Jacked, Inc.â„¢ (www.jacked.com), the leading producer of interactive broadcasts, and the Big Ten Network, a national network airing more than 400 live events annually to Big Ten fans across the nation, today announced initial usage numbers for their joint SportsTopâ„¢ offering, which provides Big Ten fans with a multimedia complement to live telecasts. Since the launch of the product on Aug. 30, nearly half of all fans who visited BigTenNetwork.com also logged into Big Ten SportsTop, the Big Ten-branded version of Jacked’s SportsTopâ„¢. These visitors spent an average of 40 minutes during each visit.Â
Jacked, Inc. ™ and the Big Ten Network are currently in the first year of a strategic partnership to offer Big Ten fans highly-personalized, local SportsTop for all 11 teams in the conference throughout the 2008-2009 NCAA football and basketball seasons.  Jacked’s SportsTop™ get Big Ten fans in the game with cross-platform chats, stats, news, trivia, video and photos. Available through BigTenNetwork.com, Big Ten SportsTop fuse live broadcasts with the interactivity of the Web, publishing relevant content synchronized with the sportscasts.
“Jacked’s strategy is to help national and regional broadcasters provide interactive sportscasts with a local, personalized interface,� said Bryan Biniak, Founder and CEO of Jacked, Inc. “Our partnership with the Big Ten Network delivers a highly-targeted, engaging interface that also allows advertisers to reach one of the most dedicated fan bases in the sports world.�
“We know Big Ten fans enjoy interacting with each other, especially on football Saturdays,� said Michael Calderon, the Big Ten Network’s director of new media. “Since the start of the season, thousands of Big Ten fans have been taking advantage of the interactivity of Jacked’s customizable second screen experience.�
The Jacked SportsTop™ currently supports all NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL games, as well as NCAA football and basketball games. Jacked, Inc. ™ offers advertisers a variety of options to reach the captive audience of sports fans, including ads that can be tied to contextual events during the broadcast, geo-targeted and eventually synchronized within broadcast commercials.
About Jacked, Inc.â„¢
Jacked, Inc.™ is the leading producer of interactive broadcasts. Jacked is the creator of the first customizable WebTop that synchronizes online content, such as play-by-play, scoreboard, and chat widgets, with live television programming. The company’s first product, Jacked’s SportsTop™, currently supports all NBA, MLB, NFL and NHL games, as well as NCAA Football and Basketball games, with real-time, contextually-generated, synchronous programming. Jacked has partnered with numerous broadcasters and sports leagues including NBC, CBS, VERSUS, Fox’s Fuel TV, Raycom Sports and the NHL.
Jacked was recently recognized by media company AlwaysOn as both one of the OnMedia 100 and OnHollywood 100 winners and was also selected as one of 30 leading technology companies to join the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program. Jacked is a venture-backed company with funding from Provenance Ventures, Core Capital Partners and Gabriel Venture Partners. Jacked was founded in June 2006 and is based in Santa Monica, Calif.
About The Big Ten Network
The Big Ten Network is the first national network dedicated to covering one of the premier collegiate conferences in the country. With more than 400 live events, and nearly all of them in HD, the network is the destination for Big Ten fans across the country and allows fans to see their favorite team, regardless of where they live. Operating 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, the Big Ten Network showcases a wide array of classic-to-current sports and televises more Olympic sporting events and women's sports than has ever been aired on any other network. Original programming highlights activities and accomplishments of some of the nation's finest universities. Each year, the network offers approximately 35 football games, 105 regular season men's basketball games, 55 women's basketball games, dozens of Big Ten Championship events, a nightly studio show, coaches' shows and classic games. Available to all cable and satellite providers nationwide, the network currently has agreements with AT&T U-Verse, Charter, Comcast, Cox, DirecTV, DISH Network, Insight, Mediacom, Time Warner Cable, Verizon FiOS and 230 cable operators.
For more information, please contact:
Wes Ackerman, Cohn & Wolfe for Jacked, Inc. – (310) 526-5535 or wes.ackerman@cohnwolfe.com
Sasha Fedulow, Cohn & Wolfe for Jacked, Inc. – (310) 526-5502 or sasha.fedulow@cohnwolfe.com