NEW YORK -- The Associated Press has announced it will introduce a destination microsite for college football fans in August.
The AP Top 25 poll, the nation’s most respected ranking of college football programs, will serve as the anchor for the college football microsite. It will provide a wealth of AP stories, statistics, photos and social networking features, as well as the best curated gridiron content from college football reporters and editors at AP member news organizations.
The football site builds on the recent success of AP’s Olympic Winter Games platform (
http://wintergames.ap.org). It was one of the initiatives announced by AP President and CEO Tom Curley at AP’s annual meeting.
“We are working on an AP Top 25 offering that will pull together a network of members interested in creating a range of collegiate football products for the Web, mobile, and the tablets,” Curley said in a statement. “The arrival of smart phones and tablets, including devices like the iPad, ushers in a new era for consumers. News consumers should be able to get the content they want when they want it and even where they want it. And we, as news producers, have a second chance to innovate.”
The football hub will be the second product developed by AP Gateway, the business unit designed as a launch pad for new services from AP and other interested news publishers. AP Gateway, announced in February, first delivered the AP news application for the Apple iPad earlier this month.
“We think there are a number of vertical content areas, like football, where the combined strength of AP and its members could be unmatched,” says Curley. “This will be prime territory for future Gateway projects. Beyond that, we expect to offer our content partners a variety of ways to take their content to market, both individually and collectively, taking advantage of new business models, including the wide variety of pay models now under development.”
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