March Moola: Sportsline.com is boasting about a slam dunk in advertising from the month-long NCAA college basketball tournament.

The Fort Lauderdale-based company that provides Internet sports content through its CBS Sportsline.com Web site reported record advertising revenues for a major sporting event of $5 million, all related to its “March Mayhem” coverage of the 2001 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship. The tournament, which starts with 64 teams and climaxes with its Final Four weekend, is typically the best revenue producer for Sportsline.com. This year’s ad revenues exceeded last year’s by 30 percent.

“We get a lot of traffic during those Thursday and Friday games that are typically held during office hours,” said spokesman Alex Riethmiller. “Fans check in to get live scores all day long.”

Sportsline also was the only site to provide live audio feeds, because of its partnership with CBS, which telecast the games.

Sportsline.com Chief Executive Mike Levy noted the site had attracted blue chip advertisers and increased revenues in spite of an unfavorable advertising climate.

Advertisers included Courtyard by Marriott, Sony, AT&T;, Holiday Inn, Honda, Miller Genuine Draft, Toyota and Volvo.

Many of the advertisers sponsored contests or special features, such as Courtyard by Marriott’s sponsorship of the oft-printed out listings of which teams played each other at each level. More than one million contestants registered for the site’s tournament-related contests and games, the company added.

*Kudos: Precision Response Corp., the Fort Lauderdale-based division of USA Networks Inc., N.Y., was ranked No. 2 of the Top 50 teleservices agencies for incoming calls in the nation, according to Customer Inter@ction Solutions magazine. PRC specializes in outsourced customer care, providing a mix of traditional call center and e-commerce customer care technologies, such as its online “click to talk” service to provide real-time live customer support on e-commerce Web sites.

*Home Run: Ultimate Software, Weston, which provided Internet-based payroll and employee management solutions, will provide its UltiPro software services to process the payroll and manage human relations for more than 1,100 employees of the Houston Astros baseball organization.

Ultimate also handles the payroll processing for other major league baseball teams, including the Florida Marlins and the Arizona Diamondbacks.

People

*Rick Dellar and Rick Sheldon, founders of Intelisys Inc., Petaluma, Calif., a sales and consulting company for the telecom industry, recently joined the advisory board of Miami-based Inatel, a provider of software solutions for the telecom industry.

*Florida International University Biscayne Bay named Joseph King assistant to the vice provost in charge of technological development. King has been an instructor at FIU for 12 years.

*Cenetec, the Boca Raton-based technology accelerator company, recently named Michael Chalhub chief financial officer. He had been the company’s director of finance since May 2000. In addition, the company promoted Jay Mandelstein to vice president of technology and operations and put him in charge of technology for all Cenetec facilities; the company also operates accelerators in Gainesville and Miami. In addition, Henry Loutsenhizer was promoted to director of creative services for Cenetec.

Christine Winter can be reached at or 954-356-4664.