ESPN launches new free digital video platform to push brand into mainstream
ESPN is to make a major new digital push with the launch a free new short-form video offering for Australia and New Zealand called ESPN View, Mumbrella can reveal.
The new video product brings together the video from all of ESPN’s digital sport properties into one place and for free, and is likely to be a challenger to rival Fox Sports as well as the offerings from the sports codes themselves. Content will include footage from its various panel shows and documentaries, online sports news sites like ESPNcricinfo and ESPNFC, plus video match reports across AFL, NRL, A-League, Super Rugby and Cricket.
“This was a natural play for us given TV is a centrepiece of ESPN in Australia”, said Lance Peatey ESPN’s director digital products and partnerships.
“Our business in Australia is our TV channels and our digital business, on that side we are the largest multichannel publisher across the sports category but those users are splintered across six different websites and we want to aggregate all the video across our network into one destination for sports fans.”
The new product is designed to cater to the tastes of Australian and New Zealand sports fans with an unrestricted video experience, and is designed to responsively adapt across any device but will challenge incumbent players such as Fox Sports and the major sporting codes who have in recent years ramped up their digital and video offerings.
“Most of those models (Fox Sports) are paid models and ironically even though we come from Pay-TV we are in fact trying to aggregate the digital assets across our network and also gives users a taste of what our channels on Foxtel carry,” he said.
“We are certainly not looking at the canibalisation of our TV product. This is complimentary and it goes against the grain of what other providers are looking at doing with a paid model. Ours is the opposite.”
ESPN View replaces the existing footytips.com.au video section, and will be optimised with a range of features for the existing 800,000 active users on that site who have already indicated their favourite sports and teams through a registration process.
ESPN’s existing digital properties include espn.com, espnfootytips.com.au, espnfc.com, espncricinfo.com, espnscrum.com, espn.com.au, and ESPN View is already active at footytips.com.au/video and will be rolled out on other properties in the coming weeks.
Nic Christensen
If this is the site – http://video.espn.com.au/ (which was noticeably left off the PR release)… then they’ve got a fair bit of work to do.
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About time there was some competition to FoxSports and their paywall model.
Looks to be heaps of Football and US sport on there too.
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Hey Sports Fan. Since when is Foxtel a “paywall”. It’s not called PAY television for nothing. Fork up or shut up.
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