UsportsHub beta captures news, rumors and expert analysis for all 346 teams in men’s division 1 college basketball. However, this is a limited version of our larger strategy. There are other sports, new ways for fans to engage and more athletes to be accessed for their first-hand expertise. Below is a sneak peek of our vision of how we plan to change the college sports world as we know it.
The problem
College sports fans have access to more content on their favorite teams than ever before. Typical college sports fan visit an average of 3.6 sites each day to keep up. Die hard fans visit closer to 7 sites each day. Does this sound like you?
College sports fans are some of the most dedicated. They deserve a simple, time-saving way to keep up with their favorite teams in an interactive community. The full-scale version of UsportsHub will make it easier to be an informed college sports fan by providing these three connections:
Step 1: Connecting Fans to Information and Content
It is extremely difficult for one site to cover all 346 college basketball teams, let alone any additional college sports. Larger national sports sites like ESPN are organized to promote only their content. It only makes sense to tap into the entire web and gather this content by topic. This is accomplished through content aggregation. (con·tent ag·gre·ga·tion = organizing a collection of content into simple feeds).
Other site’s attempts at content aggregation in sports have been limited and not succeeded in meeting the expectation of fans.
So, is this even possible? We say YES. And we think our comprehensive UsportsHub beta proves this. This site captures news, rumors and expert analysis for men’s division 1 college basketball. It is a custom application and process that reviews over 1000+ articles a day and organizes them into feeds for all 346 teams and 32 conferences. It also allows for the ability to filter and customize by 13 topics. This is a feat no site has EVER accomplished before! While we are proud of our site and the great feedback so far, this is a limited beta version and only a sliver of our larger strategy.
The full-scale UsportsHub will not only organize the content but act as a resource for all of your questions on games and events. It will also keep you informed of official team and school notifications.
Step 2: Connecting Fans to Other Fans
Without a central community, only small pockets of fans are able to interact with each other. Social media sites have helped connect fans, but would require fans to engage on personal sites with strangers. Most are still using their isolated team message boards for this interaction which only supports churning of the same ideas. While message boards are great, let’s break the barriers of a divided fanbase and allow for global message boarding. This way even rival teams can be tagged on a single post so both sides can bring their perspective to the open game discussions.
Private posts will also allow fans to debate within a closed circle of friends. But don’t worry, we also allow the ability to flag and demote trolls to keep the riff raff out. Finally, fans are able to create their own posts and tag any team, player or topic they choose. This builds a rich community of engagement and the Facebook-like social platform for college sports that fans have been looking for.
Step 3: Connecting Fans to Experts
Sites like Bleacher Report have done a great job in enabling fans to create their own content. While there is added value in the observational expertise of the game, it is rare for sites to tap into the applied expertise that you would find from the athletes themselves.
Our team is made up of former college players with an extensive network waiting to have their voices heard. We have started this process with UsportsHub beta by building out a team of professional athletes and sports writers. This model will be sustained using our UsportsHub Mentorship Programs where hand-selected athletes and other professionals are looking to learn new career skills under the wings of seasoned mentors.
Our unique network and approach will provide fans a new level of insider access and bring topics such as scouting, recruiting and team strategy to a professional level. We will also utilize emerging technologies to bring you new forms of insider perspective and continue to push the envelope to bring fans the latest for engaging with college sports.
About the UsportsHub Team:
Usports Founders
Co-Founders, Reginald Davis and Ryan Johnson bring a combination of experiences that include digital marketing, web strategy, visual design, technical consulting, project management and corporate technology strategy in addition to their vast expertise in the world of basketball as players and fans. The UsportsHub extended team is comprised of like-minded former players and sports writers. (see our Team Roster for details) We have also surrounded our team with a group of expert advisors, which includes an NBA veteran, NBA champion, NBA coach, 20-year professor of sports journalism and former editorial director of several leading university publications.
