When Brandon Tolbert signed on as a linebacker four years ago with the Dallas Cowboys, the move had one serious drawback for the longtime Georgia Bulldogs fan.
In Texas, Tolbert, who starred in college as a linebacker for the University of Georgia Bulldogs, was no longer in the broadcast region for his beloved Dawgs' games each Saturday. To keep up on the action, he would call two friends, Heath Hyneman and John Buchanan, to get updates on how Georgia was doing.
Out of those phone calls came the idea for Celecast, a service started by the three friends, which now offers "broadcasts" of college football games over cell phones.
The idea for the service, which launched this fall, is simple. Subscribers pay for access to the company's array of games -- with plans ranging from $10 for one week's games to $90 for the entire season. After signing up, the subscriber calls Celecast's phone number from their cell phone and picks the game they want to hear. The broadcast from the school's radio-rights holder is routed to the phone, and suddenly, a fan can keep tabs on Michigan or Kentucky from anywhere in the country.
Behind the scenes, Celecast, based outside Atlanta, has built a network that lets all of this happen. The feeds, which are gathered by satellite and coupler links, can be routed to individual users.
Of course, users are getting their games on a phone, which the partners at Celecast see as a big advantage.
"We think it's a better way of doing streaming," said Buchanan. "There are 150 million cell phones in the United States, and with our system, you don't have to be tied to a computer."
Portability is one advantage of using the cell phone. Another is that college football games are played primarily on Saturdays, or at night. This lets subscribers with free night and weekend minutes on their cell-phone plans avoid paying for airtime, which would add up quickly over the three hours of a college football game.
But will consumers really want to listen to games on their cell phones? Russell Adams, who covers technology for the SportsBusiness Journal, isn't so sure.
"Sometimes you have to be careful not to do things just because you can," said Adams. "It's cool that they can do this, but when are you in a position when it makes sense to listen to a football game on your cell phone? It seems like it could be a little antisocial."
That said, Adams does allow that if anyone is willing to use this sort of system to listen to a game, it's college sports fans.
"There's a real demand among displaced college fans for any kind of live content," he said. "College sports fans and alums are pretty hard-core, and the money they'll spend and the lengths they'll go to are pretty extreme."
Celecast is a step up, at least in terms of cost, from other similar services. A service called Teamline has existed for several years, allowing a user to call an 800 number and get the radio broadcast for their team. However, a game costs 50 cents per minute for the first hour, and then 20 cents for each additional minute. That means a three-hour game would cost more than $50. Teamline suggests having friends over and listening to the game on a speakerphone to split the costs -- not exactly a setup for a beer commercial.
So far, more than 90 colleges have signed up with Celecast. Each school gets a share of the revenue from the subscriptions.
"Each college gets the same revenue split," said Buchanan, who declined to say what percentage of revenue is passed on to colleges. "There are schools out there who want more, but we're not in a position to offer that. We'd like to have more schools, and we're in the process of trying to do that, but it's a lot of legwork."
The revenue for schools isn't large right now -- Celecast averages a couple of thousand listeners on each college football weekend. But that's with almost no marketing other than paid-placement advertisements for searches on Google.
For college basketball season, however, Celecast is preparing a marketing blitz, hitting the top 10 sports media markets and advertising on Jim Rome's nationally syndicated radio show.
Whatever success Celecast ultimately achieves, its founders believe they are showing another way that content can be delivered, and another way that colleges can make even more money selling the rights to their sports.
"A few years ago, these sorts of rights didn't mean anything to schools," said Buchanan. "Broadcast.com was just putting the games online for free. But now they're interested in this. We're here to help the schools make money, and to give fans and alumni a better way to get to the game."
