Bobthetech
10-02-2006, 04:33 PM
By Evie Haskell
It's not often that you find a big, successful company brave enough to learn in public. And even less often that you find one willing to admit a mistake. So our hats are off this morning to the folks at ESPN on their now defunct Mobile ESPN service. After just nine months, the doors are closed on this run as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO in the jargon) and while the trial was plagued with missteps, it was a strong first try ... and it taught us (and we'd bet the folks at ESPN) a good deal about some of the new media opportunities facing us all.
For those of you who missed its nine month run: Mobile ESPN offered on-the-go sports news and programming to folks willing to shell out for: (A) the (at first) very expensive phones needed to carry the service; and (B) a monthly fee which bounced around a bit before finally settling at $40. The idea, of course, was to tap into a key demographic (all those young male sports nuts) drawing them into a new kind of viral, virtual network, sort of a logical next leap from stars like Face Book, You Tube, etc. But after a nice splash at the '06 Super Bowl, Mobile ESPN sank out of view only to disappear altogether last week. And while the remaining customers can continue to use Mobile ESPN until the end of this year, after that they'll be ported over to someone else's service.
So what went wrong? Some initial marketing missteps certainly wounded the product. (For example, what started out as ESPN Mobile was quickly, and splashily, re-branded as Mobile ESPN.) Plus the costs were a bit high for the target audience who could, after all, get some of the content elsewhere. So right there are some important lessons. And while some analysts believe ESPN folded its hand early on this venture, we'd bet anything that they'll be back in the not too distant future with some aggressive licensing deals for the MVNO space. After all, let's keep in mind that these are the folks who are currently working with new media platforms ranging from a wide variety of dot-com sites, to web-based radio to wireless access protocol services to the new (and, in our opinion, severely under carried) ESPN360.
That's a whole lot of learning in public ... and exactly the vibrant, proactive kind of approach that makes this business fun.
It's not often that you find a big, successful company brave enough to learn in public. And even less often that you find one willing to admit a mistake. So our hats are off this morning to the folks at ESPN on their now defunct Mobile ESPN service. After just nine months, the doors are closed on this run as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO in the jargon) and while the trial was plagued with missteps, it was a strong first try ... and it taught us (and we'd bet the folks at ESPN) a good deal about some of the new media opportunities facing us all.
For those of you who missed its nine month run: Mobile ESPN offered on-the-go sports news and programming to folks willing to shell out for: (A) the (at first) very expensive phones needed to carry the service; and (B) a monthly fee which bounced around a bit before finally settling at $40. The idea, of course, was to tap into a key demographic (all those young male sports nuts) drawing them into a new kind of viral, virtual network, sort of a logical next leap from stars like Face Book, You Tube, etc. But after a nice splash at the '06 Super Bowl, Mobile ESPN sank out of view only to disappear altogether last week. And while the remaining customers can continue to use Mobile ESPN until the end of this year, after that they'll be ported over to someone else's service.
So what went wrong? Some initial marketing missteps certainly wounded the product. (For example, what started out as ESPN Mobile was quickly, and splashily, re-branded as Mobile ESPN.) Plus the costs were a bit high for the target audience who could, after all, get some of the content elsewhere. So right there are some important lessons. And while some analysts believe ESPN folded its hand early on this venture, we'd bet anything that they'll be back in the not too distant future with some aggressive licensing deals for the MVNO space. After all, let's keep in mind that these are the folks who are currently working with new media platforms ranging from a wide variety of dot-com sites, to web-based radio to wireless access protocol services to the new (and, in our opinion, severely under carried) ESPN360.
That's a whole lot of learning in public ... and exactly the vibrant, proactive kind of approach that makes this business fun.