While the year is still young, you could make a fair argument that ESPN’s mobile service is likely to be remembered as one of the biggest bombs of 2006. Witness: the handset compatible with the service, the Sanyo MVP, has seen its price fall from $500 at the time of the trial launch in November, all the way down to $99 at the start of baseball’s regular season.
The main problem with the ESPN Mobile phone is cost — it requires users to switch to Sprint, and to purchase the Sanyo handset and expensive calling plans (none of which feature unlimited calls or data.) Is the ability to watch Sportscenter on your phone worth close to $500 when it’s all tallied? Add to that the fact that the ESPN mobile virtual network operator restricts Web access to ESPN-approved sites. And while the interface has impressed many reviewers, the phone doesn’t really offer anything all that out-of-the-ordinary. Sports scores are available from the Internet, which many people can get through their cell phones these days for a cost of around $6 a month.
While sales figures haven’t come in, Will Leitch of the sports blog Deadspin took an informal poll of how many readers owned — or knew someone who owned — the phone, and only got back one email in the affirmative.