April 30, 2001--Williston, VT and New York, NY - Charles Schwab's Nastar.com, the online sports community accelerating grassroots participation within the North American ski industry, ended up the 2000-2001 season with a boost: Nastar member participation increased nearly three times from the season prior to Global Reach Sports forming a successful partnership.
In November, 2000, Global Reach Sports teamed up with Kaleidoscope Sports and Entertainment, Charles Schwab and Ski Magazine to launch this online sports community Charles Schwab's Nastar.com. Over the first year of this partnership, membership and participation within the Charles Schwab Nastar Community increased from 39,000 to 142,000 racer days while 90 resorts in 21 states and Canada used the Global Reach Sports Timing Software.
John Arrix, VP of Kaleidoscope Sports and Entertainment and Program Supervisor, commented, "Global Reach Sports's participation lent credibility to a growing program that we hope will build awareness for a great sport--especially as we head to the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City."
Many athletes took advantage of the online registration capabilities provided through Charles Schwab Nastar. However, the real success rested in the Global Reach Sports technology making the seamless transition of results and participant data to/from each resort's computer and www.nastar.com.
This impacted all participants: Athletes could travel home, login and find their weekend's result and their current, updated and comprehensive ranking while the resorts' responsibilities became easier to handle as it took only a simple login and push of a button to upload the new data. Benefit to the resorts did not stop there, as they received any current updates to the Nastar.com software each time they logged in.
Jim Fain, publisher of Fain's Nastar Newsletter and active member of the substantial Texas Ski Council exclaimed, "I particularly like the complete rankings. These complete listings of all qualified racers are much better than just showing the Top Ten. This system is by far the best in the history of the Nastar program."
Web site design and development, e-commerce solutions, content management, integrative software development, and participatory community tools and features comprise the Global Reach Sports platform with the particular mission of increasing participation and services across an entire sport, starting with grassroots development on up to professional and elite-level performance.
Nastar is the largest recreational grassroots ski race program in the world, giving competitors the chance to be timed, recorded, and ranked in a national system. Over 90 resorts in the U.S. and Canada participate in this far-reaching program.
The Charles Schwab Corporation is one of the nation's largest financial services firms serving clients through offices, regional telephone service centers and automated telephonic and online channels.
One of the newest additions to the Allied Communications Group of IPG, KSE is a vertically integrated sports, event and marketing services company whose long-range goal is to become the leading single-source company in the field, both domestically and internationally.