Baseball On The Mobile Phone…
There aren’t many categories of content that I’m particularly enthusiastic over when it comes to getting people to pay for it on the mobile phone. One exception may be sports. Sports fans are the type of people who want content now, which makes them willing to pay. People know this online, and now they’re going wireless as well. Sprint has announced a deal to offer Major League Baseball games on their MobiTV service. MobiTV is their attempt at doing streaming video that has received terrible reviews. However, sports is one area where it might just work. People want to know what’s going on now, and even at a slide-show-esque one or two frames per second, the diehard might be willing to pay. Of course, you have to be quite a diehard, because it’s going to cost you an extra $25/month ($15 for MobiTV, $10 for the MLB games). I’m their target audience – a diehard baseball fan who obsesses over games (and I don’t live in the home market of my favorite team, meaning I’m more desperate for info) and a Sprint PCS customer – and it’s still not worth $25/month to me.
