Sportsline.com staff get red card

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SportsLine.com - which provides online sports content for a number of sites including CBS SportsLine.com - is to shed some 90 jobs in the hope of saving $10 million.

Despite increasing Q1 turnover from $14.8 million to $22.3 million, it said it had no option but to cut its workforce by between 15 per cent and 20 per cent.

None of the company's sales force will be shown the red card, SportsLine.com said, although "discretionary marketing" will be taking an early bath.

The sports media outfit blamed poor advertising sales and the downturn in the US economy for the cuts.

Yesterday it reported an increased Q1 loss of $23.8 million compared to $21.9 million during the same period last year.

SportsLine.com's Web sites are not insignificant - they accumulated an average of 25.2 million page views a day during March. ®