College Football on the Small Screen – this is what ESPN Mobile was supposed to be about

Posted Wed, 30 Aug 2006 10:52:00 EDT by Ken Hyers

According to today’s Washington Post, ESPN Mobile will soon begin broadcasting as many as 25 full-length college football games each month to its subscriber’s phones.  The story doesn’t say how much customers will have to pay for the football package, but the news is a positive one for the MVNO.  To date the service provider’s sports offerings haven’t been that much better than what was available to mobile subscribers with other operators (I know the folks at ESPN will disagree with me on that one).  But the ability to watch a full game, live, rather than just a minute or two of highlights after the game is over, is a real winner to my mind.

How ESPN Mobile shows the games though, is important.  As noted in ABI’s report on mobile video services, it’s important that video to be shown on a mobile’s small screen be properly shot and displayed.  On the small screen, the players, and more particularly the ball, will be hard to see if wide-angle shots are used.  Lots of close ups are helpful, which means using separate cameras, mounted above the broadcast camera but taking tighter shots, and using a second production team to re-cut the live show on the fly and edit it for mobile.  The cost of doing this sort of thing is higher than simply repurposing the regular broadcast feed, but it is necessary for making the video engaging for mobile.  

Nevertheless, I wonder how many people will watch an entire game on their phones.  If they do, they might need to plug the handset into a charger in order to make the battery last the entire game.  My guess is that people will tune into the game for a few minutes at a time to check the progress of their team.  Still, the cool factor alone will make this service worthwhile if it’s not too expensive.