High school broadcast network Wazoo Sports, Inc. has received a $2 million equity funding from Meritus Ventures, L.P.

Wazoo Sports, Inc. has offices in London, Kentucky, Knoxville, Tennessee and Benton, Kentucky. Wazoo Sports currently employs 15 people between the three offices.

During the 2007-2008 high school basketball season, Wazoo Sports broadcast 88 games live over the Internet. Wazoo Sports also provides unlimited on demand viewing of their content, including all 88 basketball games from this past season.

The United States Golf Association (USGA) announced that the recently held USOpen.com set a record for live concurrent streaming viewers during the playoff round of the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in San Diego, California.

More than 2.5 million streams were served on USOpen.com, surpassing all previous single sporting event numbers. The numbers peaked at more than 600,000 concurrent streams during the playoff.

USOpen.com’s new video internet console allowed fans to watch the playoff in a high quality and reliable environment. The technology was provided through its newest corporate partner IBM, which designed and hosted the site.

Basketball fans visiting TNT.tv andTNT’s broadband channel TNT OverTime on NBA.com during the 2008 NBA Playoffs will find a new interactive feature: KnockNok chat. TNT has partnered with Los Angeles-based KnockNok to host a new live, interactive chat technology on the Web sites. A new vision for chat technologies, KnockNok hosts dynamically topical micro-chat rooms for major sports and entertainment events, giving fans the chance to rile one another and share commentary in real-time.

Leveraging the popularity of blog commentary and discussion forums, KnockNok gives sports fans and web users real-time interactivity to make web coverage of live events truly engaging.

Will this service click? Maybe, but not with me. Without Chris Paul and LeBron James playing, I would rather watch baseball (I’m biased).

The New York Times announced launch of a special online section for the 2008 Olympic Games with a new blog called Rings. Rings is dedicated to the full range of topics surrounding the summer Games in Beijing, from the competition itself to the social, political and economic issues attached to them. Rings brings together analysis and perspectives from sports, foreign and business reporters at The New York Times and in its bureaus around the world.

During the Olympics, The Times’s special online section will include:

• Contributions from more than 25 Times journalists in China, including “Sports of The Times” columnists George Vecsey and Harvey Araton

• An interactive guide to the Games where readers can view daily and hourly event schedules, up-to-the-minute results and corresponding Times coverage

• Forums for readers to post comments and share their stories

• Audio and video interviews and features

• Highlights from archived coverage of past Games dating back to the 1988 summer Olympics in Seoul.

Swarmcast’s Autobahn Platform will power all 2008 regular season games delivered live over the Internet on MLB.com’s MLB.TV in high-quality at 1.2 Mbps. With tens of millions of monthly unique users to MLB.com, 2,430 games and over 10,000 hours of live baseball being delivered over the 2008 season, this is the largest live streaming implementation of Internet TV in the world.

Built on Swarmcast’s patented multi-source streaming technology, the Autobahn Platform offers an unparalleled level of quality, reliability and scalability compared to existing solutions, where viewers experience rebuffering and other interruptions in service that undermine the overall user experience of online video. By blending multiple CDNs together, the Autobahn Platform bypasses limitations inherent to traditional streaming, ensuring that each viewer is watching video at the highest available bandwidth for their individual connection. On Opening Day, MLB.TV and Swarmcast delivered over 1.7 million live game streams, an unprecedented level of traffic that shattered previous opening day viewing records.

A new online social network designed for sports fans, TopSportsBets.com, specializes in offering expert sports picks, along with the latest scores, news, game schedules, and betting information. Members have the opportunity to create their own “spot”, with a custom avatar and profile, and network with other sports fans. The site will also be launching a feature that will allow fans the opportunity to join groups that support and discuss their favorite sports teams, player news, and gaming topics.

Topsportsbets.com was founded by a former pro-athlete and a noted digital media entrepreneur who noticed a need for a well organized online community for sports fans. The site offers members free sports picks, along with the opportunity to purchase premium picks based on extensive research and detailed analysis, chosen by Topsportsbets.com’s professional handicappers.

Topsportsbets.com covers a wide range of sports, including NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball, College Football, College Basketball, Mixed Martial Arts and even PGA Tour Golf.

ESPN and AOL announced that ESPN.com will make its short-form online video content accessible directly through AOL Video, and AOL Sports, marking the first time ESPN has syndicated its video content through an Internet portal. ESPN will offer highlights from games and major sporting events as well as video clips from ESPN original programming via an embedded ESPN video player. The ESPN channel is now available through AOL Video.

For the first time, CBSSports.com, in partnership with CBS Sports, CBS College Sports Network and the NCAA will provide a live online broadcast of the Final Four and Championship game of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship via their NCAA March Madness on Demand video player. It will be the first time ever that a major U.S. sporting event has been shown live and in its entirety on the Internet.

Traffic figures for NCAA March Madness on Demand for the first eight days (First Round through Elite 8) of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship have shown tremendous growth year-over-year. In total, there have been 4,333,207 total unique visitors to the NCAA March Madness on Demand video player, a 147% increase over 2007 figures. (1,753,192 unique visitors).

A large factor in the year-over-year traffic escalation with NCAA March Madness on Demand is the decision CBSSports.com made to drop registration requirements for the product, giving fans immediate admission to the video player.

USA Today is introducing new sports features in print and online. In the
newspaper, page 3 in the Sports section is now Page 3.0 – your connection to sports coverage online and on television each day. On USAToday.com, a new sports blog is launching. Game On! will be written by two veteran USA Today sports reporters, Reid Cherner and Tom Weir.

With pitchers, catchers and position players all reporting to camp, fantasy fanatics can now enjoy their own rite of spring by signing up for FOX Fantasy Baseball on FOXSports.com on MSN. This year’s FOX Fantasy Baseball game features a revamped express registration system, more statistical analysis and a new Commissioner Bonus Program, which will reward up to 10,000 league commissioners with a free t-shirt and one grand-prize winner with a trip to baseball’s mid-season celebration in New York this July. FOX Fantasy Baseball will also feature live drafts, real-time scoring and in-depth draft materials all free of charge. Fans can sign up for FOX Fantasy Baseball through April 26.

FOX Fantasy Baseball offers both standard public leagues and customizable private leagues that allow users to have complete control over settings, such as scoring, statistics, divisions, trade deadlines, playoff teams and more. Users can also choose between rotisserie, total point and head-to-head formats.