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NCAA and Thought Equity Motion Unveil First Ever Video-Powered Vault for NCAA March Madness

For Immediate Release

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Contact(s)

Gail Dent
NCAA
317/917-6117

Abby Lurie
Thought Equity Motion
alurie@thoughtequity.com
720/382-2890


DENVER---The NCAA and Thought Equity Motion, Inc.—the world leader in digitizing and delivering video content— announced today the launch of the NCAA Vault  in anticipation of one of the nation’s most prominent sporting events, the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship. The NCAA Vault, which is available at NCAA.com/Vault, is a first-of-its-kind video publishing model, powered by Thought Equity Motion’s exclusive technology platform. Games from the NCAA’s championship video archives have been indexed with rich metadata tagging around players, teams and highlights, creating a flexible “database” of moments to enable a rich fan experience and new syndication models through an open application programming interface (API).  

The NCAA Vault lets fans search for individual plays and highlights from their favorite NCAA men’s basketball teams and athletes from NCAA Sweet Sixteen® games through the championship games of the last decade. Fans can immerse themselves in games, explore curated points in time (i.e., great finishes, dunks, current stars, etc.), and select individual moments to share with friends. Visitors can also watch full-length tournament games in the Vault.  

“Through our proprietary technology, we’ve made the NCAA’s March Madness content accessible to fans in a way that’s never been done by a sports rights holder,” said Kevin Schaff, CEO and founder of Thought Equity Motion. “This Vault experience extends the life of the tournament and enhances the excitement of March Madness at NCAA.com, increasing visitor engagement and dwell time, while also creating new advertising and sponsorship opportunities. The NCAA Vault has an open API, so in the same way that developers can build apps around a service like Google Maps or Twitter, online publishers can use our publishing guide to hook into the NCAA archive to create their own experiences and contextual media video feeds around teams, moments, years and players; we call this type of dynamic publishing ‘production through metadata’.”

By adding metadata to the March Madness archive and making the database of moments accessible through a publishing guide, the NCAA and Thought Equity Motion have created “jump-in” points within NCAA basketball tournament games. For example:

In addition, the NCAA and Thought Equity Motion added social media features to the NCAA Vault to make users’ experiences even more interactive. Fans can comment on specific moments within NCAA Vault games and share them through links or via Twitter and Facebook. Comments will show up on their Twitter and Facebook pages with links back to the exact moments in the Vault games they selected, creating conversations among millions of March Madness fanatics.

“Thought Equity Motion has done an exceptional job as our exclusive licensing agent preserving, storing, and making the NCAA video archive accessible to our partners and to content producers. Now with the Vault on NCAA.com, we are enabling the next stage in sports content interaction, where rich metadata and delivery tools allow fans to engage with and share timeless NCAA content in new and exciting ways,” said Greg Weitekamp, director of broadcasting, NCAA. “The Vault is a compelling way to share the excitement and history of the NCAA with our students, institutions, and fans.   We intend to keep the video portal live year-round and add additional NCAA content over time.”

College sports community sites and blogs are using the Vault as a resource to link to past games and moments for articles and discussions.   Click here to read the “A Blast From the Tournament Past” post at the Carolina March blog, which references a 2000 game between North Carolina and Tulsa.

For media inquiries, please contact Abby Lurie at alurie@thoughtequity.com or (720.382.2890) and Gail Dent at gdent@ncaa.org (317.917.6117). For more information on Thought Equity Motion, visit http://www.thoughtequity.com.  To see the NCAA Vault online, visit http://www.vault.ncaa.com.

 

About Thought Equity Motion

Founded in 2003, Thought Equity Motion, Inc. is the world leader in digitizing, delivering and monetizing high-quality video content. Through its advanced platform, the company provides Managed Services for media companies and content rights holders, as well as Content Services for creatives, publishers and producers.

Thought Equity Motion works with the world’s leading media rights holders to provide a suite of Managed Services, which includes asset management, digitization, backup, metadata management, curation and delivery. Its Content Services include sports licensing, API-driven Contextual Media feeds, newswires and stock footage. Through these services, Thought Equity Motion enables leading-edge video uses, such as digital media vaults and production through metadata. Thought Equity Motion drives monetization for its media partners by making their news, sports, entertainment and creative footage accessible to digital content producers in advertising, marketing, film, television, online/broadband and education. 

Video from Thought Equity Motion’s unparalleled library is seen globally every day in film, television, the Internet, digital signage, and mobile applications.  The company’s media partners include Paramount Pictures, MGM Studios, HBO Archives, NBC Sports, National Geographic, Sony Pictures, and the NCAA® and its Content Services clients include the world’s leading advertising agencies, producers of entertainment, and publishers.

Headquartered in Denver, Thought Equity Motion has a digital refinery in Laramie, Wyo. and offices in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Tokyo and Sydney. Connect with Thought Equity Motion on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. For more information on licensing stock footage, call +1 720.382.2869. 

 

About the NCAA

The NCAA is a membership-led nonprofit association of colleges and universities committed to supporting academic and athletic opportunities for more than 400,000 student-athletes at more than 1,000 member colleges and universities. Each year, more than 54,000 student-athletes compete in NCAA championships in Divisions I, II and III sports. Visit www.ncaa.org and www.ncaa.com for more details about the Association, its goals and members and corporate partnerships that help support programs for student-athletes.  The NCAA is proud to have the following elite companies as official Corporate Champions-AT&T and Coca-Cola-and the following elite companies as official Corporate Partners-Enterprise, The Hartford, Hershey's, LG, Lowe's and State Farm.

 

© 2010 Thought Equity Motion, Inc. All rights reserved. Thought Equity Motion, Inc. and the Thought Equity Motion logo are trademarks of Thought Equity Motion. NCAA Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.