Sports Nerds: A Look at the New “ESPN Radio” iPhone App

Say what you will about the Worldwide Leader and their reluctance to accept emerging media trends in respect to sports coverage, they have always been on the cutting edge of technological evolution.

One such progression is ESPN’s participation in the mobile device application space.  Already a major player in the iPhone market with their wildly popular ScoreCenter app (which is basically a gloried “bottom line” scrolling ticker of game scores), ESPN released another iPhone app this weekend.

The app is called “ESPN Radio” and is available from the Apple App Store for $2.99.

The crux of the app features live streams for 15 ESPN radio stations – including major market stations in New York, Dallas, Chicago and Los Angeles.  All are available on 3G and WiFi networks, meaning you can essentially stream live ESPN radio from anywhere.

Streaming for these stations are available online through ESPN.com, however, this application makes those stations portable.  The aforementioned “major” markets include premier ESPN installations such as “Mike and Mike in the Morning“, “The Herd with Colin Cowherd” and “The Scott Van Pelt Show“.  Make your own judgment whether or not making these embedded personalities *more available* is a pro or a con.

Nevertheless, this steaming ability is applicable for the broadcast of live sporting events on the included radio stations as well – which means most premier college football games and everything involving the Yankees and Red Sox, of course.

ESPN also managed to corral their ever-growing collection of audio podcasts into this application.  Users are able to flip through all of the archived podcasts (e.g., Bill Simmons’ show, “Pardon the Interruption” episodes, etc.) that ESPN has to offer through their online “Podcenter“.  From here, individual show descriptions are provided and users are provided the option to listen to individual podcast episodes from the app itself.

That said, the obvious question exists…

If all of the associated content within the application exists online…for free…why would someone pay $2.99 for it?

In short, that answer is “extreme, mobile aggregation“.

For a shade under 3 bucks, a user has mobile access to live, major market radio streams…as well as all of ESPN’s archived podcasts which can be streamed immediately or downloaded for future use.

ESPN’s collection of syndicated radio content, mixed with their online podcasts (which contain a subset of the aforementioned syndicated content), isn’t exactly intuitive for the broad demographic of their target market.  Not everyone understands the difference between a “podcast” and “live radio”.  For the people that do, the terms and associated content are usually mutually exclusive.  This application attempts to blur the distinction by delivering content in one, consolidated, application.

For someone that produces a weekly podcast (+2 blogging points for seamless integration of self-indulgence), it’s imperative for large scale entities like ESPN to embrace the platform and promote it effectively.  Informing their broad demographic about the benefits of mobile audio – whether its live radio or archived podcasts – helps to flatten the general learning curve that exists in emerging media.

Recommendation: Personally, I like flexibility around podcast management.  Using a podcast aggregator such as iTunes allows for greater creative control (e.g., saving episodes to future listening, sharing audio between your iPod and desktop).  Most importantly, running my podcasts through iTunes on the iPhone allows me to listen to them in the background, while performing other tasks (e.g., email, web surfing, etc.).  Listening to an episode through the “ESPN Radio” app is fine and dandy, but it’s gone once I have to close it (much like the popular Pandora Radio app).

But that preference is just for podcasts.  The ability to stream live radio (away from the comfort of a desktop/home computer) is the real crux of the “ESPN Radio” app.  Previously, it was damn near impossible to remotely listen to live broadcasts of major sporting events that weren’t carried by your local ESPN radio affiliate (read: college football games).

This app extinguishes that restriction….for $2.99.

Previous Stuff for Sports Nerds:

iPhone’s Sportacular app adds push notifications (link)
A review of MLB.com’s enhancement “At Bat” iPhone app (link)

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