What did that partnership mean for SportsLine?
It was a breakthrough for us. It gave us the credibility to raise additional capital and to go public later in ’97. The thing about CBS — they were the only one who would do a deal with us, and they didn’t have the NFL. We got lucky on that count, too, because early in ’98, they got the NFL rights back. [Without a television partner] it would have been difficult [to survive]. It’s hard to say what would’ve happened, but it would have been a lot more difficult than it has been. We’ve had a couple of other lucky breaks along the way. We were successful in raising a large amount of capital at a time when you could do it. And that’s enabled us to be in this game and to continue to grow our business, because if had we not raised enough capital, we never would have made it. The time was right back in the ’97, ’98, ’99 time frame. We’ve been able to manage our cash extremely well since that time, so that was a big deal for us. In the early days of the Internet, companies had visions of adver
