Are the Chicago White Sox to thank for the next new power player in Web video? Perhaps.
Season, an under-the-radar company formed by Silver Chalice Ventures — a business formerly owned by several minority owners of the Chicago ballclub — has begun selling advertisers on the prospect of running video spots alongside sports highlights across multiple newspaper and TV sites across the Web. According to ComScore, Season’s sports video network now reaches over 71 million unique monthly users.
Season was born out of a conjunction with the U.K.-based media company Perform whic made waves earler this year by securing rights to video highlights from Major League Baseball, the NHL, PGA, the NBA — pretty much every major American sports league besides the NFL.
Together, Season and Perform now distributes these highlights to 250 Web publishers, including the Boston Herald, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Denver Post — as well as Hulu and Univision — with Season providing the video-player technology and ad sales support.. Season has begun selling the ads for much of this network, which includes Scripps, McClatchy, Gannett and Meredith sites, with the exception of Hulu and Univision, which handle sales internally.
The company has just started reaching out to advertisers and agencies, said officials, touting its reach as comparable to sports giants like ESPN.com and Yahoo Sports. Among the first advertisers to sign on to test Season has been Bridgestone.
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