Local Start-up TST Media Buys WI Sports Website
Minneapolis-based TST Media announced Friday that it has acquired Wisconsin Sports Network (WSN), a news website that covers high school sports.
TST Media bought WSN from Madison, Wisconsin-based TDS Telecommunications Corporation. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Founded in 2004, TST Media is a software start-up that developed a Web content management platform called NGIN. The platform is mostly used by sports leagues, which subscribe to it and then use it to manage their players, games, and stats online. The company had 75 employees prior to the acquisition, according to a Pioneer Press report.
TST Media said that WSN will continue to offer prep sports coverage in Wisconsin, and its CEO Justin Kaufenberg told the Pioneer Press that WSN's 10 employees will remain in Madison. In a separate news release, TDS Telecommunications said that no job loss is expected as a result of the acquisition.
“Over the past 10 years, WSN has grown to become one of the largest and most highly trafficked properties of its kind in the country,” Kaufenberg said in a statement. “The passionate audience that the WSN team has built is nothing short of amazing, and we are very excited to have them in the TST Media family.”
Kaufenberg added that “in the near future,” WSN will make information such as sports scores available in real time on the WSN website and via mobile applications.
In 2009, TST Media secured $650,000 in financing from the Twin Cities Angels Fund and other individual investors, according to the Pioneer Press. In 2011, it reportedly received an additional $3.5 million from El Dorado Ventures, a Menlo Park, California-based venture capital firm that has an office in Minnetonka.