St. Augustine’s professor Mark Janas took note of the struggles not only at his institution but also several others that were facing in terms of content creation and promotion.
He created a viable solution.
Janas created SkoolKast, a platform that HBCUs can use to publish and monetize content, creating revenue streams for the sports programs and the university. High school sports programs can use SkoolKast as well.
“Over the last five years I’ve spent teaching and coaching at SAU, I’ve had the opportunity to see the challenges that small HBCUs face, particularly as they relate to the funding and resources required to launch new initiatives and programs,” Janas said. “An idea and platform like SkoolKast provides the opportunity to ‘kill several birds with one stone.’ We can create a new hands-on learning opportunity in a real sports-related start-up while at the same time generating a potential new revenue source for the school and creating a model and process by which we can launch future initiatives.”
Janas had the technology for Skoolkast in storage from a previous project, which led to a quick proof-of-concept development period, which also cut down on rebuilding and retooling time as well.
Janas’ goals are for widespread usage specifically from HBCUs and sponsorships to help move the project along.
“Our hope is to develop a content base with 50-plus HBCUs by the end of the year, along with a few marquee sponsors and batch of local advertisers that will generate revenue for all participating schools,” he said. “By next year we want to train the majority of participating HBCUs to also function as their own media hubs, covering other high school and college sports in their regions and generating even more revenue.”
Janas has made SkoolKast a hands-on project as his spring semester students will be contributing to the platform’s development.
“We completed the pilot launch confined to SAU last semester while we continued to refine the business and marketing plan in a class with senior sports management students,” he said. “We’ve also made the required tech enhancements based on feedback from the pilot launch and additional needs identified in class.
Last week, we started reaching out to other HBCUs and have already set up several school accounts with the intention to start casting scores over the next few weeks. This work will continue as the spring semester starts in earnest. More focus on sponsors and advertisers will begin mid-semester.”
