College sports network Big Ten Network and Txtstation have teamed up for a real-time text-messaging promotion for the 2008-2009 academic year.

The sport networks' viewers will be able to interact live with Big Ten Friday Night Tailgate Presented by Nissan by sending a text message from their mobile phone.

"Big Ten wants to engage and interact with fans on television," said Michael Falato vice president of sales and business development at Txtstation, Austin, TX.

"Our unique, high-definition capabilities encourage participation, allow the fans to interact with the brand, and subsequently, a one-to-one dialogue with the viewers is created," he said.

Users who participate in the various calls-to action will receive confirmations on their phones.

In addition, the Big Ten will be using Txtstation's real-time, broadcast-quality graphics service to implement text polling during its broadcasts.

Txtstation customized its application to make it compatible with Big Ten's existing technology and ensure high-definition quality.

Txtstation is a mobile marketing company specializing in sports and entertainment.

The company lets broadcasters, event owners, sponsors and general media to communicate with viewers or fans directly through mobile phones, Internet and landlines.

Txtstation runs interactive SMS-based campaigns sports- and entertainment-related brands such as the four major sports leagues, soccer's FIFA World Cup, golf's PGA Tour, the Ultimate Fighting Championship and the Live Earth charity concert.

The Big Ten Network is a network dedicated to covering college sports. It covers approximately 400 live events and nearly all of them in HD.

Each year, the network televises approximately 35 football games, 105 regular season men's basketball games, 55 women's basketball games, dozens of Big Ten Championship events, a nightly studio show, coaches' shows and classic games.

Available to all cable and satellite providers nationwide, the network currently has agreements with AT&T U-Verse, Charter, Comcast, Cox, DirecTV, DISH Network, Mediacom, Time Warner Cable, Verizon FiOS and 230 cable operators.

In addition, Alltel Wireless and Txtstation have partnered to offer interactive promotions to fans at select Alltel-sponsored sports venues.

With Txtstation, Alltel is able to launch a real-time text messaging feature at five sponsored properties.

The text feature, Alltel Fan Poll, will ask fans inside the stadium a question to which they can reply and see the impact that their vote or answer made directly on the video-board screen (see story).

"They were looking for new ways to engage their viewers and we are always looking to align with a market leader we are very excited to have the opportunity to work with the Big Ten Network," Mr. Falato, said.