ESPN got driven clear out of the MVNO game, but it wants another go at winning the hearts and minds of US mobile subscribers — this time through a partnership with Verizon. "ESPN MVP" will become a new standard feature of Verizon's VCAST offering at no additional cost, offering a slew of sporty content.

Unlike the train wreck of last time, you don't have to actually buy a specific ESPN phone just for this service, which, if they hadn't have been all ESPN-hubris-y, is what they would have done in the first place. You need one of those Verizon V-Cast phones, and you have to subscribe to the service, but yeah, it makes a little more sense. Unfortunately, it still comes with ESPN programming.

Verizon To Offer "ESPN MVP" Sports Content[Engadget Mobile]

Burglars stole almost 8,000 phones worth at least $1.5 million from a cell phone warehouse over the weekend, prompting the company's owner Tuesday to offer a $50,000 reward.

Included were 6,500 Sony Ericsson Z525i phones worth about $110 each retail and about 1,000 ESPN Samsung ACE phones that sell for about $105, Kaufman said.

No word yet on suspects, but if you see any shady characters watching dated sports highlights at slow speeds before becoming frustrated and chucking the thing in the trash, call your local CrimeStoppers.

Burglars Steal $1.5 Million In Cell Phones [Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel]

MobileESPN is back from the dead sheriff, only this time as a zombied version of its former self. No longer an MVNO, the service for sportos is now limited exclusively to Verizon Wireless subscribers under a new multi-year deal. According to the AP, the deal is not yet finalized but should be announced sometime today with a service launch in "the coming months." And it's free for those of you already ponyed up for VZW's VCAST service and compatible phone.

That's tech talk, and we don't really understand most of it, but from what we can gather, it sounds like ESPN Mobile is doing what it should have been doing all along: Working as a platform channel on another phone's already existing system. In other words, you don't have to buy an ESPN Mobile phone anymore just to receive it. Though, the way things are going, if you really want it — REALLY WANT IT — eventually someone will probably make you purchase DirectTV, just to be a dick about it.

Mobile ESPN Lives On Verizon [Engadget]

And sometimes the sun simply comes up.

Mobile ESPN, a start-up cellphone company backed by Walt Disney Co., will announce as soon as Thursday that it is closing down operations, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

The newspaper said Mobile ESPN is hoping to reinvent itself as a content partner of bigger wireless carriers, citing people familiar with the matter. ESPN could not immediately be contacted.

The story was originally reported by Paid Content and confirmed by WSJ this morning.

It's funny, too: We were JUST about to buy one. We know it's a little late, but, you know, seeing Dan Le Betard being interviewed yesterday while an ESPN Mobile phone flashed on the screen finally convinced us; we think maybe we just hadn't been exposed enough to it yet.

By the way, we have no idea what happens if you're one of the 30,000 people — whom ESPN spent $150 million to grab — who bought one of these phones. Paperweight?

Major Change Coming At Mobile ESPN [Paid Content]
Mobile ESPN To Close Down Operations [Reuters]

(UPDATE: ESPN big dog honcho man George Bodenheimer has announced the end of ESPN Mobile to his employees in an internal memo. That internal memo is after the jump.)

————————————————————————————-
______________________________________________
From: Bodenheimer, George
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 10:15 AM
Subject: Mobile ESPN

Growth and innovation often involve taking risks and ESPN has not shied away from aggressively seeking to improve our business at any point in our history. Mobile ESPN was one such undertaking with many challenges and in the best tradition of ESPN the Mobile team built the finest wireless service for sports fans.

However as the business developed, we confronted a very competitive sales environment for our MVNO while at the same time attracting significant interest from others to license distribution of Mobile ESPN. Taking all of this into account and after careful consideration, we have decided to change direction and turn Mobile ESPN into a licensed wireless application to be offered by one or more major national carriers. This shift will allow us to get Mobile ESPN's critically acclaimed content to many more fans much more quickly.

Consequently, Mobile ESPN will no longer operate as a service provider after December 31, 2006. Until then, we will continue to offer voice and data service to all Mobile ESPN customers, including many of you. We will maintain in-depth communication to employees and customers within the next 30-60 days to ensure the transition to a new carrier is as easy as possible. All purchasers of a Mobile ESPN handset will receive a refund of the full purchase price.

For help addressing any questions you may have, please check ESPNField NEWS beginning Monday, October 2.

While we believe this decision is the right one for our business, we fully recognize that it impacts the lives of many of our Mobile colleagues and their families. We will work with each of them to help manage this transition and look for other opportunities within ESPN as may be appropriate. I would like to thank all of them for a remarkable job in conceiving and launching this product. We are very proud of all you have accomplished.

Andrews said that the people were giving game updates to their friends and family back home, but as Jeff points out, they may also have had a passing interest in things like the safety of their loved ones, pets, homes, and things of that nature. Erin Andrews chose this moment to plug ESPN Mobile, saying that if the people back in Columbia had it, they could get updates on the game. The same thing is also noted here on Philly and Beyond.

The nerve of those people... not having ESPN Mobile. Scores and highlights are so easily accessible that it's selfish not to have it. Instead, they whine about tornadoes and impose upon their friends to pass along scoring updates. Just man up, people of Columbia, do the right thing, and buy an ESPN cell phone. Get your ass to a Best Buy, because I do not want to hear you bitching when the next tornado rips your house apart and you don't know the score of the Chiefs game.

Let Me Introduce You to Some Little Leaguers [Philly and Beyond]

Merril Lynch, a company that tends not to mince words when it comes to capital, has officially wrote that Disney should "pull the plug" on ESPN Mobile in a note to investors. Here's the money paragraph:

[The analysts] now estimate that ESPN Mobile will lure a mere 30,000 subscribers over the course of this financial year, well below their original estimate of 240,000. Along with the losses generated by a second Disney-branded phone service, ML expects that the Mouse will lose $135 million on its experiment in FY06.

So there you go. We probably don't need to say any more about this: It should be covered now.

Merrill Lynch: Time To Pull Plug On ESPN Mobile [MediaWeek]

It was one thing when Mel Kiper had to deal with the indignity of having his daggum top 10 messed up. It was another when Stephen A. Smith smugly pointed out to Tim Legler that all those papers were holding him back. It was another when Trey Wingo invaded our home through direct mail.

But — and we recognize that we are often perceived as Peter Gammons apologists and therefore were more depressed by this than some others might have been — to see Gammons shamelessly hawking the ESPN Mobile phone through bad acting ("Can this guy ever throw a STRIKE?") and the same stupid catchphrasery we've always thought he was above ... well, it just made us sad. We probably shouldn't have been so surprised, we know.

Mobile ESPN's model doesn't appear to be winning over consumers. The start-up, which was launched in February, had signed up fewer than 10,000 customers through May, according to people familiar with the situation. Robert Iger, Disney's chief executive, said on the company's first-quarter earnings conference call that initial sales from Mobile ESPN were "lower than hoped."

Just to give you an idea of how few 10,000 customers are for a venture that featured major advertising during the Super Bowl and, obviously, on ESPN every minute of every day, 10,000 people is:

• Smaller than our hometown of Mattoon, Illinois.
• Fewer than the number of people who visit this site in an average afternoon hour.
• More than half as many people who attended this Devil Rays-Royals game in Kansas City.
• Fewer than the number of people who saw noted summer movie flop Poseidon in its first three hours.

So yeah. It has really gone well.

Cellphone Start-Ups Struggle
As Media Services Fail To Catch On [Wall Street Journal]
What's $25 Million Between Friends? [Deadspin]

(By the way, anybody else get the Trey Wingo direct mail piece about the phone? We did, and we kind of assumed everybody did.)

A little bit of market research would have solved this for them.

Q: What market segment needs the absolute, most up to date sports scores, info, etc? A: Bookies. Q: What phone does your average bookie have? A: The cheapest-ass no-contract pre-paid he can find since he'll only have it for a couple weeks before he gets another.
Add in some voice encryption, host the billing records in a third world country, and you might have a real product. Not that I know anyone who would need that specific set of features. Ahem.

So depressingly, obviously true.

What's $25 Million Between Friends? [Deadspin]

From yesterday's Sports Business Daily:

Mobile ESPN has lost $25M so far after launching a $30M ad campaign that included an ad on ABC's Super Bowl broadcast, according to Alice Cuneo of AD AGE. Disney President & CEO Robert Iger acknowledged, "Initial results were a little bit lower than we had hoped. But we have changed our pricing approach, we have strengthened and redirected our marketing, we're expanding our presence at retail." Ovum wireless analyst Roger Entner said that the $25M loss "would be considered 'normal' by carrier standards." Entner added, "I would rather expect that to increase with more customers coming on board, but to swing into profitability [within 2-3 years]"

This, of course, makes total sense, because a technology that already seemed outdated (not to mention, of course, unreasonably expensive) the day it came out should absolutely come around to profitability in two or three years. Technology tends to be nice enough not to change for large corporations looking to over-leverage a brand name.

Wait ... does this mean we have to watch those ads for the next two years?

Sports Business Daily [Official Site]

You might not want to start whipping out your wallets just yet; entry level cost, with switching and plans and so on, is pushing about $500.

The price slowly kept sliding until hitting $99 for the start of the MLB season. The $99 handset is being marketed now. Also, new handsets are upcoming with at least one expected this summer; I heard as early as June. No pricing details yet. The entry level cost now for someone who wants the phone more for the ESPN features than talk time: just over $500. As the customer's cost decreases, the MVNO's subsidy costs increase but new subscribers lock in income. On the lower plans, it could be a wash for the year; higher plans should bring faster returns. That basic $34.95 plan is meant as an alternative for people already locked into contracts with other carriers.

At this rate, potential customers are advised to just wait another six months, when the phones will be peddled for either $25 or some old Cosby sweaters at your local swap meet. When that happens, expect Mike Greenberg to be nearby, hawking the glories of checking "Bonds On Bonds" highlights on your Sanyo handset, clandestinely, so that your wife — who thinks you're an idiot — does not notice.

Mobile ESPN Resets Sanyo Handset Price To $99 [Paid Content]

We received one email.

And that person doesn't even have the ESPN phone; they just have the Sanyo handheld device ... and that's just because they work at Sprint. An excerpt of their report:

This should have been offered as a Sprint phone. On the ESPN network, you can't access the regular Sprint Web sites. The plans are outrageous at ESPN. It's like I have a Lexus without an engine!

We don't want to imply that this has been a disaster of epic proportions for the network — has there ever been a Super Bowl ad that inspired only about 30 people to buy your product? — but in about a week, you're going to be able to get one of these free with a purchase of a Chris Berman coffee mug at participating ESPN Zones.

Full email after the jump.

—————————————————————

I actually have a Sanyo 9000. Well, I work at a call center at Sprint in Florida, in the retention group. We all thought that the Sanyo MVP was going to be a Sprint phone. I mean, this is bad: I work at sprint and didn't know this phone didnt work with sprint. I guess we all just assumed that all new sanyos worked for sprint. I actually bought one on ebay and cannot get it to work on my sprint account.

It's a really nice phone. it takes mini sd cards. they sell a 2gb version. the blade which i had only holds 47mb or 6 to 8 songs! then your camera wont work until you delete some songs. The ability to tranfer files makes the phone like an ipod. Even thought i cant "use" my phone i have put lots of MP3 and i can plugged the phone into my car streo.

The black case with red buttoms looks hot. the speakers are louder and clearer than the blade or 8300. This should have been offered as a sprint phone. On the ESPN network you cant acces the regular sprint web sites. the plans are outrages at espn. Its like I have a lexus without an engine!

Anybody Out There Have ESPN Mobile? Anyone? [Deadspin]

So we thought we'd ask around to all of our hardcore sports fan friends. Surely, with the raw number of sports addicts we know, someone had one, right? Even one they got free for promising to write a story about it or something?

Nope. We couldn't find a single person. We, and many of our cohorts, are young(ish) males with expendible income and an insatiable appetite for sports information. And we still couldn't find anyone who had one. Do any of you have one? Email us at tips@deadspin.com and let us know. Someone. Anyone.

ESPN Cellphone Has Great Sports Content But Many Trade-Offs [Wall Street Journal]

The talk centered around the future of sports online, but it was ultimately, from all reports, an advertisement for the ESPN Mobile service, which we dissected last week. The trio (with occasional dissentions from McDonell) talked about how desperately sports fans need their highlights immediately, when they're stranded away from a computer or a television. And then, as online discussions tend to do, the conversation veered toward blogs. From MediaBistro's report:

"[They discussed], of course, blogs blogs blogs. ("They don't have the burden of truth," Stern said). We don't think any of the speakers had looked at Deadspin.com; they were asked, and none said "yes."

We would like to agree with Commissioner Stern that blogs do not have the burden of truth. To prove it, we'd like to say that we totally loved the beard.

Breakfast On Steroids At Conde Nast [MediaBistro]
Bodenheimer Sells Cells [Broadcasting And Cable]
Is ESPN Worth It? [Deadspin]

First things first, it's difficult to deny that what the phone offers is cool. The video and interface are unlike anything you've ever seen. There's all sorts of mobile-exclusive content and all kinds of bells and whistles. We might make an argument that we don't quite understand exactly when one might desperately need breaking video higlights — you have to be away from a television and a computer; there's the popular archetype of a guy stuck at a wedding, and that, along with driving a car, are the only times Americans are away from either of those things — but if you want them, you've got them here.

Here's the thing, though. If you want this service, you have to be a Sprint customer. If you have Verizon, or T-Mobile, you're out of luck; you're gonna have to switch to Sprint. Right now, there's no other way to get the service. So if you have a long cumbersome contract, forget it.

But if you're already a Sprint customer, you don't just get the service. You have to buy the ESPN-specific handset. That's gonna run you about 300 bucks. You're gonna have to buy a brand-new phone JUST to get your ESPN highlights. Even if you're already with Sprint. Just so you can watch Stuart Scott at a wedding. We're huge sports fans (and Sprint customers, we might add), but we're not exactly gonna shell out that kind of cash for something we'll use only sporadically. No matter how cool it is.

The issue is not with the service itself, which is impressive; the problem is that ESPN is demanding its customers turn over their entire cellphone world just to play along. Not only do you have to use their service (Sprint), you have to use their phone. The entire thing is on their terms. It's a huge risk hinging entirely on brand recognition and loyalty. Maybe they're right. Maybe it'll work. Or maybe they'll completely backtrack in six months once they realize people don't want to jump through all those hoops, and concentrate on getting ESPN as the sole sports content provider on all cellular carriers, which, frankly, might have made more sense in the first place.

ESPN Mobile [ESPN]
Mobile ESPN Kicks Off Sunday [Wireless Week]

(UPDATE: ESPN speaks! We just received the following email from a spokesperson:

Hi Will - Saw your post today about Mobile ESPN. Just wanted to clarify a couple of points about the service.

While Mobile ESPN uses Sprint's network, the service is not available to Sprint customers. Mobile ESPN is the carrier - billing, customer care, service contracts, etc. is all through Mobile ESPN. The Sanyo MVP ($199) is our first phone, but we'll roll out other handsets throughout the year at various prices.

The monthly plans range from $34.99/month - $224.99/month. All plans include voice, SMS, wireless internet access and all the ESPN sports content.

If you have any other questions, MobileESPN.com has a ton of information on the service, pricing plans, etc. Thanks ...

So there you go.)