ESPN Mines For Gold In Torrent Of iPhone Downloads

ESPN Leads Pay & Free Sports Apps

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 sports franchise has added pay apps aimed at a niche of a niche: ESPN Radio, which went live over the weekend for $2.99, and ESPN Fantasy Football, for $4.99. For now the number of pay apps outweighs the free four to three — more of each are coming — but John Zehr, ESPN SVP of Digital Video & Mobile Productions, knows better than to build a new revenue stream on the notion that pay downloads will exceed free. He’s trying to convert up to 10 percent of the potential ESPN audience for a particular app, already aware that “if things are available for free, there’s a pretty big audience of people who won

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