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

Not ahead of its time

[ackthpt]

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.

Honestly, when I first saw the option to watch a sporting event on a cellphone I had two thoughts:

• 1. Batter Life, my phone keeps shutting off the display after about 15 seconds of me not hitting a key. How much time on my battery would I sacrifice to watch hours of baseball? Maybe highlights, but not 3-4 bloody hours.
• 2. What's happening? I can kinda make out the players, but I can't see the ball. Sports don't do much on close-up, but wide views, where detail would be lost on a miniscule display

In the end, the idea had to be tried, but until people start opting for bigger phones, which is the opposite of the current trend, it just ain't gonna fly. Radio, with decent announcers is still your best mobile bet, get an AM radio.

Re:Not ahead of its time

[garylian]

I don't see how the idea "had to be tried". If I had been sitting in a room full of people and they asked me if I thought it would score big numbers, I'd have laughed my ass off.

This is one of those things for people with entirely too much time on their hands, and way too much disposable income.

The streaming video was going to be a joke. The screen is too small to make it worth the effort.

The updates... How many updates are there that are worth it? I can maybe see a perfect game going into the 9th inning being something to turn the tube on for, but for the rest of it... Nothing that has that much build-up potential is going to be something you can alert for.

There was a similar kind of service they offer on pagers for fire department personal in some areas. Back in MD, you could get pager alerts for all major fire calls in the state sent to your pager. All the new kids becoming volunteers got it... At first. Then they dropped it because it was too damn annoying, especially since the odds were the call was nowhere CLOSE to where you worked/volunteered.

Only a hardcore gambler would have considered this thing. Sports fans in general? Well, we see the evidence. It couldn't get their interest.

The time will be right when...

[The Wing Lover]

...Americans start taking the train everywhere instead of driving. Mobile phone video content does just fine in Japan.

Re:The time will be right when...

[Original Replica]

I did see someone watching a baseball game on their video I-pod on the subway today, but books and newspapers are far and away the prefered train media.

When the time is right...

[DragonWriter]

"Ahead of its time" might be one take on this as well. It'll be interesting to see when the time is right.

When cell phones have nuclear power cells that last for years without recharging, and built in projectors so that you can see video at a decent size (or wire up to your optic nerve for the same result.)

Alternatively, when prolonged cold weather causes Satan's pipes to burst.

Monkeys and typewriters

[Anonymous Coward]

If you put enough monkeys at enough typewriters, eventually they will type all the works of Shakespeare.

The above adage seems a lot like finding successful business models on the internet; or how to make money from open source, etc. Trial and error are probably just as effective as spending a jillion dollars on a thorough business analysis. Most attempts will fail but a few will succeed big time. I would have predicted that Amazon would be a success but they spent a long time struggling to become profitable. I wouldn't have guessed that Google would succeed and yet it has been amazing; beyond its founders' wildest dreams even. How can you tell? I don't think you can. These guys tried something that didn't work. Big deal. If they keep trying, they will succeed eventually.

Re:Monkeys and typewriters

[Drooling Iguana]

If you put enough monkeys at enough typewriters, eventually they will type all the works of Shakespeare.

That's only if the letters the monkeys type are uniformly distributed across the keyboard, which with monkeys won't be the case. More likely they'll simply smash at the keys, resulting in repeating patterns of letters occupying the same general area of the typewriter, which won't give you the works of Shakespeare no matter how many monkeys you have.

Now, if you took a random character generator and ran it long enough, that could eventually give you Hamlet, but monkeys just won't do it.

Could it be more of a branding / pricing issue?

[2THXTRM]

I would say that people are ready to watch sports and other broadcasts via their cell phone. After all, people have been listening to sports on the go via radio for many, many years. Why not watch it? I think the two biggest issues here are: 1. Are cell phones and the networks they utilize able to handle this new feature at a quality and price people are willing to accept? What value is added when your paying a premium to watch a stream with so little detail that you are unable to follow the game in anymore detail that the free picture the AM radio announcer paints in your head? 2. Would the outcome have been different if ESPN was a content provider/channel offered through existing mobile providers like cingular, verizon, and Sprint/Nextel? Sure ESPN is a Sprint/Nextel phone with Sprint/Nextel service but how many consumers out there know that? All the advertisements that I've seen have ESPN tagged all over their phones, which at first glance makes them appear to be a 4th or 5th tier provider rather than an extension of a top tier, established provider. To the casual consumer I would be concerned about service issues going to a new un-established provider regardless of who it was. ESPN is a sports broadcaster not a mobile phone provider. Same notion goes with Disney Mobile. They appear to have great features but I'm sure there are plenty of consumers out there that are wondering why they should switch from a "nation wide network" to Disney / ESPN mobile.

Screen and power problems are bogus.

[twitter]

this won't catch on until we have HUDs with simulated 40" displays. ... i can't see using a 1.5" screen to watch...

You don't need some kind of 3D or other unobtainable tech to make this work. My $200 digital camera from Walmart has composite video out and plays movies fullscreen. They look as good as broadcast ever did. There is no reason you can't fit the same stuff in a cell phone. Using this existing technology you could, you know, SHARE the game with your friends.

Battery life might be a problem, so you can ship it with a good wall wart.

Viola, ESPN in your pocket. Anywere there's a TV and a wall outlet, you have the game. The night watchman, people who spend all of their time on the road and any sports fan who does not have a satelite TV equipped mobile home would like such a service.

Hmm, I guess I got it right for once

[gosand]

I had a company in California really want me to work for them a few years ago. They were one of the big players in the "tv on your phone" scene. The job sounded interesting, but then I thought - why would anyone want this? It just seemed like a dumb idea to me. They claimed they had a growing market, etc. But I just didn't get it. I worried that I might be missing something, and this was a good chance to get in on something before it became big. Maybe I was right for once.

I don't have the best track record. Here are some of my other ideas of what wouldn't take off...

When I was first introduced to Unix, I thought - this is dumb. It is way too complicated, who wants to remember all these commands? This was around 1990. 3 years later, I got my first job, and had to use Unix every day as we were on Unix servers. Here it is 13 years later and I am still using it, and Linux has been on my home computer for about 8 years. :)

I was introduced to SQL in one of my classes, and thought "this is weird. Select * from... huh? I don't get it. Who would ever want to use this, it is so cumbersome.

A college classmate did one of his senior projects on this burgeoning thing called (of all things) The World Wide Web. He was trying to explain it to me, and I thought it sounded kind of ... unnecessary. I mean, we had ftp, usenet, gopher, BBS... what else could you want?