Want to watch Eurosport on your iPhone? That’ll cost you £2.39 a month. The sportscaster has released a mobile-app version of Eurosport Player, its direct-to-consumer subscription live service.
Eurosport launched Eurosport Player in 2008, offering British Eurosport 1 and British Eurosport 2, and it now costs £3.99 a month or £34.99 annually – but the iPhone service comes in cheaper, £2.39 a month or £24.99 a year. The app is free but the in-app subscriptions must renew.
There are three trends here…
— Media operators are gaining in confidence that they can charge on mobile where they don’t through other media (Eurosport TV channels are low-tier inclusions in standard Sky and Virgin Media (NSDQ: VMED) packages)
— The recurring-subscription adjunct offered by Apple’s iPhone OS 3.0 is proving highly attractive to publishers and broadcasters.
— This is an example of how content owners can go direct to viewers, routing around traditional platform gateways like pay-TV operators.
Sport could be particularly attractive in all these regards – fans have long used mobile to get latest-score data; maybe they will also want to watch games whilst on the move, too? BSkyB’s Sky Mobile TV app offers a £6-a-month Sky Sports bundle.
But app users say Eurosport is making them pay once for the Eurosport Player desktop app and again for the mobile app.
Eurosport already had a free news and scores app, though we don’t know how many subscribers it has. During the 2009 Australian Open, Eurosport Player on the desktop offered coverage from five courts, says Wikipedia.
Via Digital Spy.