At a recent magazine publishers event, an ESPN executive vice president said the company's effort to establish a mobile phone service failed because the company overestimated the number of consumers who would switch from their existing service to ESPN Mobile.
According to the exec, ESPN was under the impression that its strong brand and market strength would bring them a huge number of subscribers, but they saw that the big cellular companies like Sprint and Verizon would increase their marketing efforts to keep their users from switching, such as giving away phones.
Although ESPN Mobile has been discontinued as a phone company, they will continue to exist in the mobile content marketplace, and will be seeking deals with cellular service providers to deliver sports-related content to subscribers.
