Atlanta, GA — The Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) announced today that it has entered into a partnership with SIDEARM Sports, to redesign and vertically integrate all SIAC member schools’ sports sites under the SIDEARM banner.
“When I arrived at the SIAC in 2009, one of our most valuable assets was the enormous goodwill which we enjoy with our 35,000 students and nearly 400,000 alumni. It is this goodwill which has helped the SIAC lead NCAA DII in average football attendance eighteen out of the last twenty years. This partnership will create a platform that will not only aggregate our fan base, but also allow the SIAC to engage and dialogue with its fans in a more effective manner,” stated SIAC Commissioner Greg Moore.
SIAC Director of Communications Ruben Perez will help facilitate the development of these sites, which are expected to launch in October 2010.
“SIDEARM Sports is proud to enter into today’s expanded agreement with the SIAC to provide individual athletic websites for all of its league members,” said Jeff Rubin, SIDEARM Sports President/CEO. “The SIAC has broken ground on what could be a more common cost-saving, revenue producing and efficiency stimulating venture for other conferences to follow suit in the future. Our SIDEARM software solution provides the SIAC with the tools to leverage the information on all sites, leverage the fan base of all schools, and also generate sponsor interest in being able to buy real estate for all conference members in one agreement with the conference.”
“It’s through the vision of Commissioner Greg Moore that the discussion started and at the time, I thought this was a difficult prospect in dealing with institutions at all levels, private and public and across different states,” said Jamie Joss, SIDEARM Sports Vice President for Operations & Sales. “However, once we started strategizing of how we were going to show all of the merits of this venture to the athletic directors and presidents of each institution, it made complete sense to explore this project.”
“In over a decade of providing athletic website solutions, to my knowledge no other conference has orchestrated an agreement of this magnitude for all of the league schools to have their own athletic websites on behalf of the conference,” Rubin added. “Others have tried to recommend providers, with a number of schools in one conference working with one provider, but none that I know of have been able to complete this so that all members are on the same platform at one time.”
About the SIAC
Founded in 1913, the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) is comprised of thirteen historically black colleges and universities (Albany State, Benedict, Claflin, Clark Atlanta, Fort Valley State, Kentucky State, Lane, LeMoyne-Owen, Miles, Morehouse, Paine, Stillman, Tuskegee) located within a five state footprint including Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The SIAC is a member of the NCAA Division II. For more information about the conference please visit www.TheSIAC.com.
About SIDEARM Sports
SIDEARM Sports has a client list that includes over 320 athletic clients from around the country including Cornell University, Davidson College, Drexel University, Eastern Michigan University, Eastern Illinois University, the University of Hawaii, Syracuse University and many other NCAA DI, DII, DIII, NAIA, NJCAA and collegiate conferences. SIDEARM has a staff of approximately a dozen developers who possess a variety of expertise in graphic design, database management, information security management, web-based user interface design, and e-commerce business transaction management.
SIDEARM (Sports Information Distribution Engine with Archives and Records Management) is a web-based content management solution that includes everything from press release and roster management, dynamic scoreboards, sponsorship recognition, interactive polls, SIDEARM STATS (live in-game statistics), streaming audio and video, and newsletter and recruiting components.