Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have been notoriously underfunded compared to their predominantly white institutional (PWI) counterparts for decades. According to an analysis from the U.S. Department of Education of 16 states, for instance, those states underfunded their HBCUs by a cumulative $12 billion.
This dearth of funding at HBCUs leads to fewer resources and opportunities for all their programs, especially their sports teams—even though some HBCU sports are nationally recognized throughout the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association). But in part because HBCUs are at a larger financial disadvantage, their sports programs don’t attract as much attention as a PWI would. Without this attention, they also lack opportunities for monetization.
Seeing this problem emerge in his own school, Dr. Mark Janas from Saint Augustine’s University—a private HBCU in Raleigh—decided to create SkoolKast, a solution that would bring quicker and easier monetization. The platform is designed specifically for sports that are not covered extensively by other media outlets, including high schools, small colleges and non-revenue sports at major colleges.
Skoolkast is an easy-to-use platform designed to monetize sports content, engage fans and create revenue streams through an SMS score distribution. Fans can subscribe through opted-in text messages to stay up-to-date with the latest scores from their favorite high school and college teams, while advertisers can reach a targeted audience.
Janas’s previous experience in tech and business is what led him to create a platform that would bring light to overshadowed communities at the collegiate level. On the academic side, he has taken on more classes and helped develop and coach club sports programs, including the first-ever HBCU cycling, rowing, ultimate frisbee and SIM racing teams in the U.S.
On the tech side, when he realized how tough it was for HBCUs to earn money through their sports programs, he recognized the potential to use SMS technology to bring more eyes onto these teams’ content.
According to the SkoolKast website (based on this 2015 report), 98% of all SMS marketing messages are more likely to be seen, compared to 20% of marketing emails. You’re more likely to open a chime from a text versus if it was an email.
To test this theory, Janas dusted off a previous SMS distribution technology he had for a seminar class this past semester. The purpose of the seminar was to look at this technology and determine whether or not they could develop a business plan around it. What successfully came out of it was SkoolKast. In its initial pilot run, Janas said they had more people subscribed than they anticipated, with hundreds looking to sign up.
“Not a lot of folks are really paying attention to HBCUs,” Janas said. “And we want to do what we can do to help keep the schools funded and operating. It just feels like a win on many fronts to be able to bring this platform to them and build a nice big content base, all based around SMS—which is probably now close to a 50-year-old technology that still exists.”
Through SkoolKast, national and local advertisers and sponsors can have their ads sent to the opted-in user directly, since each score update is trailed by a short ad that schools can sell to local sponsors and businesses, providing a valuable revenue stream.
Most importantly to the mission of this program, individual schools and teams will have the ability to sell their own ads, keep their net proceeds and retain rights to sports content in their respective regions, enabling a larger subscriber base and the ability to generate even more revenue. The platform will also allow schools to even send messages on general announcements, schedule updates, weather notifications and more.
This past fall, SkoolKast was able to cover about six different fall sports, roughly around 30 games or matches. Janas said they made the conscious effort to include those sports that were part of the club sports program at St. Augustine’s, including men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball, football, cycling and SIM motorsports, which is virtual racing.
SkoolKast is currently self-funded through Janas’s own tech and investment company—in3 Investments—and earns money through the platform’s ad fees. With its potential success and sustainability, Janas hopes to formalize the platform’s processes and structures to further its development and growth so that it can work within St. Augustine’s new Innovation Center.
“I feel some commitment to helping make HBCUs successful,” Janas said. “I want to help these schools be able to leverage what they have that is valuable to the marketplace and know that the effort in the business is sustainable for them by simply providing this technology platform that’s easy to use and easy for them to exploit and leverage.”
