Sportscapsule Looking to Capture High School Audience

Sportscapsule (http://www.sportscapsule.com), a site that allows users to place and edit their own personal sports footage on the Internet, is looking to dominate their niche market. This year they have announced a series of marketing deals to promote their site including signing on as a hosting option for Microsoft Movie Maker. Additionally, Sportscapsule has recruited the help of Duke men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski as their spokesman, and is co-branding their site with Gatorade and NFL High School ( http://www.nflhs.com).

Sportscapsule's goal is to receive taped games from parents, friends, coaches and team members. The games will then be encoded and uploaded into the submitter's account, where the user can add music, play calls in the voice of John Madden or Chris Berman, and edit the clip down to their desired length. The process will allow coaches to instruct and athletes to save their favorite memories, as well as allow all athletes to have their personal moment of glory.

According to the company's sales statistics, they will have games from around 10,000 high schools by the end of fall. In order to keep their encoding costs down, Sportscapsule exclusively encodes in Windows Media and does not encode a game until it is clear that revenue will be derived. For the most basic package, the company charges the consumer $14.95 per game and $4.95 a month for hosting charges.

As Sportscapsule is a broadband application, they offer CD's of games that can be edited locally to bridge the gap for low-band users. They also offer an end of season CD with all of your clips on it for $29.95. This year marks the first season they are fully operational. Last year the company began their marketing efforts offering VHS duplication, and actually derived $100,000 worth of revenue from this service. Nonetheless, with their marketing in tact and broadband spreading, the company is looking to be profitable by 2002. They seem to have discovered a market niche, but to capture that niche Sportscapsule will have to become a common word amongst the slamming lockers in the halls of America's high schools.

The Sportscapsule interface is powered by Javu Technologies, which was co-founded by Mike Paolucci, Sportscapsule's CEO. The site was recently redesigned in August.