The software company entered an agreement with the Salt Lake Organising Committee for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games (SLOC) and NBC to produce the Olympic Web sites through its MSNBC.com property. Under the agreement, the MSN Network will sell advertising and sponsorships for the Olympics site in partnership with NBC.
The deal fills a void left by online sports company Quokka Sports, which held the exclusive rights to produce the events online but went bankrupt and shuttered its doors earlier this year.
In addition, Logictier, the company that planned to host the site following Quokka, backed out of its deal to host the SaltLake2002.com Web site. Before the Microsoft agreement, the Salt Lake Organising Committee and NBC had been in talks with other leading Internet companies including Yahoo and RealNetworks to host the Web site.
The agreement marks Microsoft's first major leap into producing sports contentââ,¬"-a highly competitive market that includes CBS Sportsline and ESPN.com. By securing exclusive rights to host the Web site, the MSN Network will be able to publish official Olympic reports on its sites-ââ,¬"potentially giving the Web site added firepower in competition to win consumers.
"AOL and Yahoo won't have rights to that content," said Sarah Lefko, an MSN product manager.
If traffic to past Olympic Web sites is any indicator, that competition could be meaningful. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, NBCOlympics.com drew 4.4 million unique US visitors in September during the Sydney games.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
This ought to be good for a laugh…