The Sports App Wars Begin: Sprint And Verizon Compete For NFL Draft

Posted by Jonathan in MOBILE on 04-20-10    No Comments


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Welcome to the age of the competing mobile sports apps.

Starting Thursday, the NFL draft will kick off at Radio City Music Hall in New York. And while I’ve always thought it would be slick if the league mixed things up with some cheerleader drafts — the Rockettes would make an excellent cheerleading combine —  this year’s draft will be about one thing tech wise: Not one, but two major cell carriers will be carrying NFL Mobile’s live coverage of the event: Verizon and Sprint both will offer NFL Mobile on many of their phones.

And let the mobile sports app wars begin.

First of all, it’s clear that these sorts of extra-game events are the perfect storm for mobile sports tech. Yeah, ESPN’s prime time coverage of early rounds might be interesting for awhile. Where Bradford, McCoy, Suh and maybe Kyle Wilson from Boise State end up might impact a real game or two across the league. So all fans care. But after those top 25 or so players, what are we really taking about here? How the draft will affect your team. And your players.  Who is going watch the full draft all day and night? I mean, please.

And poof, suddenly the NFL is producing a targeted sports event prefect for mobile devices. And the NFL, to its credit, knows it. The league has positioned itself perfectly to get into the house big time with mobile. Its mobile app is essentially a team-specific broadcast of news, blogs and relevant video. And it will be fascinating to see how the 2nd through 7th rounds will be managed by the league.

Here are my predictions.

1) Sprint pulls a Manning: Sprint has invested in lots of unique NFL content for several years. So I expect its draft coverage should be the Payton Manning of the pack: the clear leader. Any serious fan should get to a Sprint phone, and fast.

2) Verizon will show some game, but more like a Jets game. Verizon’s mobile feed is really the wild card, since I have not seen it, and VZ won’t comment on it. But basically, my read is they aren’t even sure themselves what they will get, since they are just hosting the NFL mobile device. So expect a Jets-like rebuilding year with some decent coverage for Verizon’s mobile sports efforts.

3) ESPN becomes the mobile Mets. Clearly, and I mean CLEARLY, the undisputed worldwide leader in sports television is the undisputed worldwide loser in mobile. The Mets analogy is all too chilling for Bristol. After spending hundreds of millions on mobile, starting a half decade ago, where exactly is ESPN for the handheld? Let’s be honest: nowhere. NFL analyst John Clayton is cute and all, and Sportscenter is still fun, but will that be enough of a reason to follow ESPN on your phone when the NFL produces as deep, if not deeper, a product all by themselves?

It’s incredible but true: unless ESPN finds some raison d’mobile and fast, the moving version of sports will be Superbowl III: the big championship game that got away.

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