PA Sport acquires stake in Sportal Australia

By Andrew Lippe

PA Sport, a provider of sports statistical information, has
acquired a 33.3% stake in Sportal Australia, an Australian sports Internet
company, a company that provides similar services in Australia. Sportal Australia will
provide North America with statistics from Australia while Sportal becomes the
sales agent for PA SportsTicker’s U.S. sports content in their home territories
of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. PA SportsTicker is also the
sports news source for the ESPN networks, ESPN.com, Yahoo!, CBS Sportsline,
MSNBC, CSTV and the YES Network.

We have really grown substantially, says Simon Edwards, marketing director at
PA Sport. PA Sport subsidiary PA SportsTicker supplies instant scores, breaking
sports news, statistics, previews, recaps and features. Sportal Australia
provides news on football (soccer), rugby, cricket, golf, tennis, basketball,
motorsport, and horse racing.

PA Sports differs from other statistical services in that it
sends reporters to sporting events to get the most up to date information. We
manage real-time content management, says Edwards. Our reporters are on the
phone describing the game to our operational center.

In the operational center workers input information into the
database and it is then sent to customer Web sites. PA Sport has 330 employees
and more than 850 event site reports in the United States and 1,500 worldwide.

Chris Mutimer, CEO and Director of Sportal Australia, says
the deal allows Sportal to offer the technology, tools and systems behind our
web and mobile content delivery to a new audience in the United States.
“We share with PA SportsTicker the same emphasis on quality, speed of
delivery and integrity,” he says.