MES: No MVNO For NFL, MLB

Sports might seem like a natural fit for MVNOs but execs from the National Football League and Major League Baseball explained during the sports session at the Mobile Entertainment Summit why they don’t see branded phone service as win-win for their leagues. Evan Kamer, senior director-new media and publishing for the NFL, and Adam Ritter, VP-wireless, MLBAM, know their respective brands are strong enough and their affinity groups large enough to consider an MVNO but the potential negatives far outweigh any possible gains.

For instance, the brand could be damaged by poor phone service. “Who are they going to screaming at if there phone doesn’t work,” asked Kamer. He said the “investment can pay off handsomely even if the economics are “challenging” but “at this point we have decided not to explore an MVNO model.” “The economics don’t make sense,” said MLBAM’s Ritter. He, too, is concerned about customer perception as well as the effects of an MVNO on fans who don’t opt in. Said Ritter, ” We don’t want a fan to be penalized because they have the wrong phone, the wrong carrier.” MLBAM would rather license content across carriers and provide it via any handset manufacturer. Instead of getting carrier service from a league, fans can load up their phones with team affinity packs.

During the same panel, Mike Merrill, chairman and CEO of Smartphones Technologies Inc., offered some details about the nearly three dozen college and university license agreements that give his company the right to mobile content for all the sports at each school. (The deals were announced during the summit.) The licenses are so encompassing they even include the cheerleaders. Smartphones can do fight-song ring tones, voice tones, games, images, etc.

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