NFL games now on a handset near you
The Wall Street Journal reports:
In the era of the 52-inch plasma television set, marketers at Sprint Nextel Corp. are banking on football fans to seek out a decidedly smaller viewing experience.
For the first time Thursday, a National Football League game -- the Cleveland Browns vs. the Denver Broncos -- will be broadcast on Sprint mobile phones as part of the wireless company's exclusive partnership with the league. That partnership deal is valued at about $500 million over five years.
Over the next seven weeks, Sprint will phone-cast the eight games that are televised solely on the NFL Network, the league's cable channel. For the past three seasons, the NFL has struggled to persuade major cable operators to include its channel in their basic programming packages.
With the NFL Network is available in only about 40% of American households, Sprint executives hope the NFL games can do for their company what the league's Sunday Ticket package has done for satellite-television provider DirecTV Group. Sunday Ticket, which is exclusive to DirecTV, allows dedicated fans to see every NFL game on Sunday afternoons, and has been crucial to DirectTV's growth.
"Live compelling content is a game changer in the mobile industry," said Steve Gaffney, Sprint's director of sports sponsorships.
For the NFL, the Sprint phone-casts are part of a series of experiments with digital media aimed at discerning how fans will consume football in the future. NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., conducted similar experiments this summer, showing highlights and a handful of events from the Beijing Olympics on mobile phones.
"We know a lot of fans find themselves displaced, and they are using devices like mobile phones for more tasks," said Brian Rolapp, the NFL's senior vice president of digital media and media strategy. "With 60% of our revenues coming from media, we'd be foolish not to do something like this."
The planned phone-casts are part of Sprint's NFL Mobile Live package, which is available on most Sprint handsets. The package can be purchased for $15 a month, and is also included as part of Sprint's Everything plans that start at $69.99 per month.
