ESPN has become a mobile information powerhouse, including transmitting some 63 million mobile alerts every month and receiving more than nine million unique viewers on its mobile Web site (see below), whose traffic is increasing 78 percent annually, according to FierceMobileContent.
Smartphones are responsible for 70 percent of the mobile Web traffic, with BlackBerrys at the top of the list, the article says. But the Apple iPhone also represents a major opportunity.
More than two million copies of ESPN’s ScoreCenter application have been downloaded, making it the second most popular free sport app on iTunes — right after ESPN's Fantasy Football 2009 Draft Kit, the article says.
Videos for cellular phones are increasingly important, with ESPN planning to simulcast some 1,000 live events in 2009 and averaging posting 75 mobile videos clips a day, FierceMobileContent reports.
Perhaps even more interesting is the sport network’s integration of cellular services into its cable TV broadcasts. ESPN has employed 22 on-air messaging campaigns this year, and will include a shortcode campaign in conjunction with its “College GameDay” show.
Huge opportunity
John Zehr, ESPN’s digital media senior vice president of product and product development, views cellular “as a major growth area for us, and importantly, people seem more likely to pay for content on mobile than they are for the PC, so that opens up additional opportunities.”
Every survey of mobile TV viewers that I’ve seen lists sports as one of the most popular categories. There are a huge number of sports fans around the world, obviously, and most — if not all — prefer to watch events live.
It’s a major reason some people subscribe to mobile TV.
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