Just in time for the annual horse racing hype fest that comes out of the gate with the Kentucky Derby, racing’s “bible” and the network with two-thirds of the Triple Crown have paired up for co-branded online racing coverage. The Daily Racing Form’s DRF.com is producing an in-depth thoroughbred racing…

Caught up with a frenetic David Levy long enough to get some answers on the digital aspects of the blockbuster $10.8 billion 14-year deal Turner Broadcasting and CBS (NYSE: CBS) just signed with the NCAA. “Some” being the operative word because the details literally are still being worked out between…

*CBS* Sports will keep the NCAA mens’ basketball championships in its lineup with a deal that marks the end of an era on the air and online. CBS (NYSE: CBS) and new partner Turner Broadcasting will pay the NCAA $10.8 billion over the course of a 14-year deal that starts…

Verizon Wireless has launched its first wave of NFL Mobile applications, including live streaming of Sunday and Thursday night games, for subscribers today as the official sponsor of the NFL. If you are a Verizon subscriber and interested at all in the NFL, you should download the application before the…

Tiger Woods delivered on the course and online on the opening day of the 2010 Masters. The overall numbers are sure to be larger when Masters.com traffic is taken into effect but CBSSports.com alone had 556,090 uniques—more than double last year’s 239,013.  They watched 392,901 hours of live video, up…

With the 2010 baseball season just underway, ESPN (NYSE: DIS) is expanding the number of individual teams covered on SweetSpot, the baseball blog network it started last October. SweetSpot launched with eight teams during the 2009 playoff season and the ESPN has now added another 11 sites, which are run…

The final March Madness stats are in for CBS (NYSE: CBS), CBBSports.com and the NCAA. As is usually the case, the bulk of the viewing—roughly 75 percent—happens in the first round and drops off from there as the field narrows. I’m still parsing the numbers but here are a few…

First it ate in to Sky’s Premier League lockdown by winning a chunk of live linear rights. Now it’s taken from Sky the mobile highlights rights to all 380 of England’s top-tier soccer matches, beginning from the 2010/11 season’s start, this coming August. ESPN (NYSE: DIS), as a content maker,…

NBC Sports rewrites the digital org chart, shifting Perkins Miller to COO, Universal Sports—while leaving him with responsibility for the digital side of London 2012. The rest of the rewrite shows just how layered management is at NBC Sports: Kevin Monaghan, SVP-Business Development, adds Managing Director of NBC Sports Digital…

ESPN3.com debuts Sunday night with the Yankees-Red Sox season opener and lots of enhancements but whatever the name it’s still available in the U.S. primarily to the 50 million or so subscribers whose ISPs have a licensing deal with ESPN (NYSE: DIS). That’s because unlike 99.9 percent of broadband sites,…

Some sports publishers see the iPad as a chance to start charging for apps or perhaps up the fees. Not so for the National Basketball Association, which is launching its first iPad app for free—at least for the playoffs. The NBA already has paid apps for iPhone that scale up…

YES Network has found a fourth hitter for its “TV Everywhere” lineup of live streamed New York Yankees games: Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) Cable. The regional sports network and the nation’s No. 2 cable operator have reached an agreement whereby the MSO’s customers will be able to watch Bronx Bombers’…

MTVN’s Spike TV is finally giving fans of The Ultimate Fighter reality series the chance to watch full episodes from the past 11 seasons with today’s site relaunch. The complete overhaul of UltimateFighter.com is part of a formal partnership with The Ultimate Fighting Championship and is a completely new site,…

The number of upsets kept me checking in through the first two rounds and it looks like the same was true for other March Madness followers: NCAA March Madness on Demand has already outpaced 2009 multimedia delivery by 35 percent, with more than 8.7 million hours of streaming live video…

ESPN (NYSE: DIS) is following a number of industry efforts to improve audience measurement that began last year with its own collective research effort. The Disney sports franchise is starting ESPN XP to study consumer behavior around major sporting events beginning with the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa this…

Every so often, we run up against a harsh reminder that not all iTunes stores are created equal. Rights issues—as in carriers other than AT&T (NYSE: T) have exclusive rights—will keep North American hockey fans from access to NHL Ice *Time* 2010, a new freemium iPhone app (slide show) being…

Initial stats are in for NCAA March Madness on Demand and it looks like CBSSports.com will be able to declare victory again (unlike fans of Georgetown or Vanderbilt). Unlike NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) and the Olympics, CBS (NYSE: CBS) goes for maximum exposure online—offering full, free access to all 63…

To buy or to build? That’s the question that drove Yahoo’s decision to buy social sports startup Citizen Sports, which owns a series of sports-related apps on the iPhone and on Facebook, according to Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) media head James Pitaro. “When we really sat down and looked at what…

More details on the The Sporting News switch from free to paid for its digital daily Sporting News Today, which was first announced by Publisher Jeff Price at our paidContent2010 conference last month. The Sporting News is partnering with its current digital publisher Zinio for the April 1 launch. A…