ESPN to launch mobile phone service with Sprint

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ESPN to launch mobile phone service with Sprint

 

By Chris Marlowe

 

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Sports fans will get another way to indulge their passion next year when ESPN launches ESPN Mobile, a telephone service offering everything from video highlights to news and score alerts in addition to traditional phone calls.

 

The sports cable network announced the underlying deal with Sprint Corp. on Wednesday, marking the first such service in the United States.

 

"We're a sports media company, and it's our job to deliver content on whatever platform fans want it on," said ESPN executive vp John Skipper, who heads the network's advertising sales, new-media and consumer products activities. "We consider nothing more important than servicing our fans, and they are more and more getting their information wirelessly."

 

The mobile service will have "graphics and talent that are uniquely ESPN," Skipper said, and will offer video at broadcast-television quality. There also will be games, building on the brand's success with its video game titles.

 

The network is considering a wide range of other content, including a continuous scroll of league scores, animated versions of its on-air personalities delivering the sports scores and sidebars of information like those familiar to viewers of the network's "Pardon the Interruption" program.

 

License terms and affiliate relationships need to be carefully respected throughout the initiative, Skipper said, so specific content plans are still being determined.

 

Even the hardware is being designed to fit the brand, though manufacturers have not been disclosed yet. "People are still using this phone as their primary voice phone, so we have to have a handset ... that they don't feel weird about pulling out in a restaurant," Skipper said. "But when you see it across an airplane aisle or you see it across a restaurant, you can identify it as an ESPN phone."

 

The service will begin during the second half of 2005, with a national rollout by the beginning of 2006, Skipper said. ESPN intends to target the 100,000 people who already subscribe to its premium online news and information service, and then to the more than 2.7 million unique weekly visitors to ESPN.com

 

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but ESPN Mobile basically will rent part of Sprint's high-speed PCS network while handling content, billing, customer service and related functions itself.

 

Similar network rental relationships, known as Mobile Virtual Network Operator deals, are becoming more common. One other example is Virgin Mobile USA, a joint venture between Sprint and Richard Branson's Virgin, and AT&T Corp.

 

"We believe ESPN's involvement in wireless will help stimulate even further consumer demand for high-speed data services," Sprint president and chief operating officer Len Lauer said in a statement.