CSTV Lands Big Sponsor

College Sports Television (CSTV), which launched Monday night following the NCAA championship game, earlier in the day announced that Coca-Cola has signed a letter of intent to invest in the new channel which features college sports not available elsewhere.

The proposed $15-million deal with Coca-Cola includes a $10-million equity stake, plus $5 million to be dedicated to integrated marketing and promotional activities.

As part of the deal, CSTV and the soft-drink giant expect to develop new programming, joint advertising and consumer marketing initiatives to complement Coca-Cola’s 11-year, $500-million sponsorship of the NCAA. The deal with CSTV includes sponsorship of a Sunday night block of Notre Dame sports other than football and men’s basketball, beginning this fall.

CSTV is available on Channel 610 on DirecTV. Deals with major cable distributors are pending.

Fox Cable has chosen FUEL as the name for its proposed channel dedicated to action sports. The channel is expected to launch in July in about 2.5 million homes on Time Warner Cable, Cable One and DirecTV.

The Tennis Channel and the International Tennis Federation (ITF) have signed a three-year agreement for the U.S. television rights to the Fed Cup, Davis Cup and Hopman Cup. The agreement includes live competition and classic matches. Davis Cup rights are for non-U.S. matches.

The Tennis Channel was scheduled to launch in March but officials are now saying it will be later this spring. The channel has not announced any distribution deals since agreements with the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) and Time Warner last summer.

Channel 2 announced Monday that it will televise the 27th Wooden Award ceremony from the Los Angeles Athletic Club Saturday at around 3:30 p.m., following the third round of the Masters.

The ceremony, formerly televised nationally by Fox Sports Net, is being televised locally by Channel 2 but syndicated to CBS stations in the home markets of the finalists for the award.

Officials are hoping the event will be televised nationally by CBS in the future.

Saturday’s telecast, which will be co-hosted by Jim Hill and new Hall of Famer James Worthy, will include the presentation of the Legends of Coaching Award to Kansas’ Roy Williams.

Finalists for the college player of the year award presented by John Wooden are Nick Collison of Kansas, T.J. Ford of Texas, Hollis Price of Oklahoma, Dwayne Wade of Marquette and David West of Xavier.