Since 2007, NeuLion College President Tim Vargas has been leading the charge in giving college sports fans great digital experiences.
For the better part of the last 20 years, NeuLion has offered its clients solutions for web publishing, mobile app development, HD OTT video streaming and ticketing, as well as donor and guest management. In 2016, Vargas was put in charge of the company’s college accounts. Then in early 2018, NeuLion was acquired by Endeavor. The company soon realized that in order to best serve its 70-plus clients, specifically in the college space, it would need a more streamlined approach.
Soon after, NeuLion College was born as a standalone to specifically serve those clients.
People outside the world of sports marketing may not realize the stark differences between the professional and college world. Vargas believes that companies like NeuLion College simply have more to offer the college market.
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“One of the biggest ways that college and pro sports are different is pro sports teams usually have really solid business teams in terms of marketing prowess and analytical capabilities. Those are important things when it comes to keeping your content in front of fans and finding your fans where it matters. Pro sports teams always have great resources dedicated to that. I think it’s more the exception than the rule in college sports that you find those capabilities. So as a service provider, if we can be more than just a technology provider, but also a provider of some of that expertise, I think that makes a big difference.”
While transitions like this can be an uncertain or frightening time, Vargas seems to exude confidence about the company’s future after spinning off into its own entity.
“The transition has been tremendous, to be quite honest,” Vargas said. “Being able to focus specifically on the college side of things allows us to serve the needs of those clients in much more streamlined way. It’s also helping us develop our products at a much faster rate, and we’re advancing those products in ways that I don’t think the market expects.”
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Thanks to advances in NeuLion College products like SocialDirect, Vargas and his team expect the NeuLion College brand to continue growing extensively in the next six months or so.
“We’re uniquely positioned for some pretty impressive growth; impressive, maybe not in the quantity of schools, but I definitely think it will be in the quality of schools that we start signing on with. Everybody here is really energized and engaged — and that is going to result in service like we’ve never provided before and technology like we’ve never provided before. If we can keep that momentum going, this is going to be a really interesting year coming up.”
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Also, expect the company to continue development on statistics technology in the near future.
“We recognize the deficiency of our current product offering in that area. But we’re building something that I think is going to impress not just our existing portfolio, but anyone else who has looked at us and seen what our capabilities are with that respect. We’re taking the opportunity to completely rewrite and rework everything that we do with respect to stats. I think we’re going to have some features that none of our competitors have, and we’re really excited about that.”
