ESPN announced yesterday that it was shutting down its mobile virtual network, Mobile ESPN, at the end of 2006. See these articles in Forbes and Gearlog for details.
I was wondering if anyone was buying these phones or using this service. I’ve seen their advertisements on ESPN all year, but I’ve never ever seen anyone who used these phones.
The target market had to be 21 to 30 year old men, but most of them already have a cell phone.
One analyst noted that ESPN should have marketed the service for a few more months, at least until the end of the college and professional football seasons. Every additional month would bring ESPN more opportunities to promote the service, and provide more potential customers who were at or near the end of their mobile phone contracts.
Very few people want to pay for two cell phones, especially from two different carriers.
Granted, the target market I’ve identified includes a lot of gamblers. Gamblers will buy almost anything if they think it will provide them an edge. Mobile ESPN is an attractive service for these men, as the service delivered text and video content from ESPN’s television networks directly to the customer phone.
Keep in mind that ESPN didn’t operate the mobile phone network. It bought minutes and network management from Sprint, and resold the service to its customers.
Now ESPN plans to license its mobile applications to other carriers. Good luck! There are other mobile virtual network operators in the US such as Disney Mobile, Amp’d Mobile and Helio.
Helio is a joint venture between EarthLink and SK Telecom, led by EarthLink founder Sky Dayton, and partnered with MySpace as its core content source. It’s hard to argue with the man who built the second-largest ISP in the United States, or with the News Corp social networking juggernaut.
But Helio seems to be in trouble. I haven’t seen anyone who uses their phone or their service. Quite frankly, Helio’s teenaged target market has even less disposable income than the Mobile ESPN crowd. Helio does offer a tradeup program that lets customers sell their handset to Helio, but the rules are seem too complicated for most 16 to 25 year olds to follow.
Helio’s latest announcement is a combination EVDO-WiFi card, combining the fastest cellular data service in the US with 802.11 b/g access. Helio is also developing devices with built-in EVDO-WiFI access for release next year. The card is just a stopgap measure.
Imagine a Helio branded PDA or laptop that can access MySpace wherever there’s a decent cell phone signal.
I could imagine an ESPN branded device — but ESPN has thrown in the towel for now.
