Last week, VNN awarded $361,321 to high schools across the country through its revenue-sharing program. Carmel High School (IN) was the top earner, receiving $7,536 in its first year with VNN.
“That was definitely more than twice of what we expected to come back,” said Jim Inskeep, athletic director at Carmel High School. “It was a nice, pleasant surprise in these uncertain economic times.”
Each year, VNN pays a portion of its earnings back to schools that make it possible. The amount is based on local advertisements and site traffic. The more advertisements and traffic that a VNN site has, the more money the school can earn.
Finding advertisers
Rallying community support was no issue for Carmel. As a single-school community with 5,400 students in grades 9-12, Inskeep said Carmel High School is “the hub of all activity in so many ways.”
“We have a lot of local businesses that want to partner with us and give back, but we’ve struggled to find ways for community partners to get involved with our athletic program,” Inskeep said.
VNN provided an easy way for community businesses to advertise while supporting athletics, he said.
Driving traffic
Since locating advertisers, Carmel’s athletic staff has worked hard to keep fans visiting their athletics site.
“We do so much day-to-day on our [linked] Twitter account and our coaches are posting all contest results to our website,” Inskeep said. Coaches also have their own logins to upload team stories and photos, which has been a huge asset, according to Inskeep.
“We found it to be an awesome tool for coaches to create and post their own content rather than passing it off,” he said.
Regularly posting content, as well as having strong community support, has clearly paid off for Carmel.
“Right now, we are in such a conservative spending mode not knowing what attendance may look like so … this type of unexpected payback is something that helps,” Inskeep said.
Interested in joining VNN and learning more about the payback program? Schedule a demo today at vnnsports.net/schedule-demo.