With the World Cup final coming Sunday, ESPN (NYSE: DIS) provided us with an update on how much traffic its digital properties have generated from the tournament to date. In total, ESPN says that a staggering 110,000 people per minute have been using its online and mobile services to access…

How does ESPN (NYSE: DIS) keep its growing empire fed? With deals like the exclusive 12-year pact with the ACC announced today. In exchange for a serious chunk of change—SBJput it at nearly $2 billion or $155 million a year—ESPN gets more than 4,800 events to spread across its various…

ESPN (NYSE: DIS), which has already notched more than six million downloads for its free ScoreCenter app, continues to expand its digital presence on devices with six new mobile apps announced at today’s upfront. Five are actually localized versions of the same one, a free ESPN Local app that will…

ESPN’s mobile efforts had a stand-out year in 2009. Its ESPN (NYSE: DIS) ScoreCenter was downloaded more than 4.5 million times and was ranked as the top free sports App in iTunes; ESPN was the 8th most-trafficked mobile website, according to Nielsen; and total minutes spent viewing ESPN Mobile TV…

It’s been just over three years since *ESPN* officially pulled the plug on Mobile ESPN (NYSE: DIS), its MVNO (service shut down on Dec 31, 2006), and it’s clear that the company has learned much about what it takes to sustain a successful mobile presence since then. How successful? Find…

In less than a year, *ESPN* iPhone apps have been downloaded more than 4.5 million times—more than 2.2 2.7 million of the free ESPN (NYSE: DIS) ScoreCenter alone since its June debut. Most of the downloads are for ad-supported versions but twice in the past couple of weeks the Disney…

Remember Visage Mobile? The San Francisco-based company was one of the unlucky few that got caught up in the MVNO heyday. Founded in 2001, Visage helped Disney (NYSE: DIS) Mobile and others resell mobile services directly to consumers. It raised an astonishing $90 million in venture capital. Now that most…

Mobile social network platform provider envIO networks has appointed former Vantrix head Manish Jha as president and CEO of the company. He replaces the company’s co-founder and previous CEO Prakash Iyer, who takes up the position of Chief Technology Officer. Jha, who arrives from Vantrix, a Montreal-based mobile content application…

Reports that Sonopia was shutting down spread like wildfire yesterday, but its founder Juha Christensen, said today it’s not true. The company is still alive, but drastically scaling back its business and essentially hibernating until the U.S. MVNO market turns around. Sonopia has eliminated all of its U.S. employees from…

Is ESPN’s (NYSE: DIS) new mobile strategy paying off? For three days, ESPN.com has had more visits to its NFL content through its mobile phone web site than it did through its PC web site, reports Adage.com. Moreover, ESPN reported that usage of its mobile web site is up more…

Dutch mobile operator KPN has found success in Germany with the cut-rate, no-frills, no subsidized handsets mobile plan it offers through Base, a brand it had imported from Belgium. Indeed, as Businessweek notes in its feature article on KPN, it’s shaken up the Vodafone-T-Mobile “duopoly” in the country. While the…

I caught up for a few minutes at CTIA with John Zehr, the ESPN SVP of digital media production. We talked about ESPN’s multi-year exclusive commitment to Verizon (NYSE: VZ) for the user interface that survived its ill-fated MVNO; its WAP efforts; the use of ESPN personalities across platform; and…

ESPN has announced that its PodCenter service will be available on the iPhone from now, and “exclusive content for iPhone users is also in the works”—although what that content will be isn’t described. The deal covers 35 podcasts with 15-20 sponsors, and podcasts to the iPhone will have the unique…

This is very funny, and true. ESPN, which closed down its MVNO and then relaunched again recently as a content app on Verizon and branded ESPN MVP, now says in an internal memo that employees, who all use Cingular, can’t switch to VZW. Here’s the Q&A in the memo: Question:…

The New York Times has a comprehensive piece on mobile video/TV, although most of the info comes from ESPN (it also talks about CBS, Hearst, MediaFLO). John Zehr, senior vice president for digital video and mobile products at ESPN, said that he believes ESPN’s mobile content will become more important…

This was announced in February, and is launching now: Verizon Wireless is launching ESPN MVP on its service, in a multi-year exclusive deal….it will have news, scores and more; bunch of features can be customized. VZW will offer the service free to customers who pay $15 a month to subscribe…

Sricharan Iyengar, VP (Sales and Marketing) for ESPN has told the Hindu that ESPN is working on offering sports news in Tamil and Bengali, as a part of its Mobile ESPN service. The story also quotes Nazara Technologies CEO Nitish Mittersain as estimating the regional VAS market at around Rs.…

ESPN has announced the line-up for its new channel, ESPN Mobile TV, which will show on MediaFLO’s service, currently on Verizon’s V cast service. There’s two new shows:—ESPN ReSet: A one hour show, hosted by ESPN talent, which features the best segments from ESPN’s morning programming, including Mike & Mike…

It’s a cliche, to be sure, but looking at Mobile ESPN, it’s hard not to think what a difference a year makes. This time last year, Mobile ESPN was coming off a Super Bowl launch that turned out to be more of a thud than a boost for Disney’s first—and…