ESPN Mobile Reaches The End Of The Road

fishdan writes "Sportsdot is reporting on the fact that people are apparently not interested in watching baseball (or any other sport) on a cell phone screen. ESPN Mobile is (ahem) pulling the plug after less than one year of service. Current subscribers will get content till the end of the year, and their handset purchase refunded. You have to wonder what other mobile content is going to have to be rethought." "Ahead of its time" might be one take on this as well. It'll be interesting to see when the time is right.

Comments

Death due to Proprietary Lockin

[bughouse26]

The trouble was potential subscribers had to: 1. Get a new phone 2. Switch providers to Sprint/Nextel & sign a 2-yr contract Not to mention the huge fees for content you can get on any web-enabled phone for free. Wang 2.0

Re:Not ahead of its time

[joshetc]

On top of all that.. theres no point.

Instead of making things so general they should push high speed broadband to cell phones. Let people stream WHATEVER they want via them. Youtube, google video, divx files, etc.

THEN distributors can sell specialized content. Nobody is going to pay for a phone to watch football, then another to watch TV shows, then an ipod video to watch movies, etc, etc.

Step 2... question mark...

[dpbsmith]

Year 2000 dot-bomb formulae:
--We're going to sell dog food... but... we're going to do it on the WEB!
--We're going to sell kid's toys... but... we're going to do it on the WEB!
--We're going to sell groceries... but... we're going to do it on the WEB!

Nowadays:
--We're going to broadcast sports... but... we're going to do it on CELL PHONES!
--We're going to bombard you with advertising... but... we're going to do it on CELL PHONES! ... and, of course...

--We're going to let you browse the Web (and buy dog food, kids' toys, and groceries)... but... we're going to do it on CELL PHONES!