Carriers Jumping Into Mobile Sports Data
For years, the first data services to mobile phones were always supposed to be: news, sports, weather and stocks (though, some would like to add porn to the list). Of course, most of these have been available for a while, even on the simplest phones with data services, so it’s not clear why carriers and sports organizations are so excited about licensing deals. From the article, it sounds like the sporting organizations may be tricking carriers into believing that only the organization that runs the sport can provide scores and news about sporting events. It’s notable that the article mentions that Major League Baseball is really pushing mobile data. MLB.com is also trying to tell other websites they can’t post game data — even though previous court cases have clearly shown it’s legal. One area where the companies might make more money is in advertising and video clips (which they do own the rights to), but the article doesn’t focus on those areas as much.
