September 28th, 2006 by Justin Oberman
In case you have not heard, the MVNO ESPN Mobile is [add your own ‘giving up’ sports metaphor here]. ESPN Mobile’s parent company Disney announced today that they are putting a halt to ESPN Mobile’s current MVNO practices and will be “revamping” the entire operation to cater the services to already existing carriers. The call to axe the MVNO operations also came from Merrill Lynch already asked Disney to pull the plug in a research note published back in July estimating that MobileESPN had only snagged 30,000 of the 240,000 anticipated subscribers since its Superbowl launch representing a loss of some $135 million. No surprise, really.
I always thought something was up when I noticed that the MVNO side of ESPN was working separate from the already existing “Wireless” part of ESPN in what seemed like trying to get the best of both worlds. I guess they just realized that they should have started out with their original idea of providing wireless services through the carriers.
The ESPN Mobile website has a letter explaining that services will end December 31st 2006 and work to deliver the same content through “another nationwide carrier.” My guess is that it will be Sprint since that was the carrier the MVNO was ridding on the back of.
ESPN Mobile is even refunding the 500 dollar handset after which people could use it as a paper wait or add it to their sport memorabilia.
For what its worth, James at Moconews (link above) makes a good point in the fact that Disney did not even give their MVNO a year. the debate about whether the move is premature will go on, with many leaning towards no. I see many case studies in the future.
Technorati Tags: espn, espn mobile, espn wireless, mvno
