Can Major League Baseball revolutionize mobile video?

Mobile video consumption continues to grow, with over 15 million Americans viewing video on their handsets in the second quarter of 2009--that's a 70 percent year-over-year increase, according to new data issued by The Nielsen Company. Mobile viewing averaged a total of 3 hours and 15 minutes per month in Q2, down 22 minutes from first-quarter totals (viewing time always drops in summertime, Nielsen notes)--by comparison, viewers averaged 3 hours and 11 minutes watching Internet video in the second quarter, with home viewing clocking in at a staggering 141 hours per month. While U.S. subscribers between the ages of 25 and 34 represent 32 percent of the mobile video audience, a larger share than any other age group, teens aged 13 to 17 dedicate the most time to screening mobile video, spending 6 hours and 30 minutes per month, exactly twice the national average.

Nielsen adds that men now make up 59 percent of the U.S. mobile video audience, a demographic disparity that could have something to do with the extent to which sports dominates the mobile video landscape. Last week I attended an ESPN media event at the sports programming giant's Bristol, Conn. headquarters--as several execs pointed out, video is core to everything ESPN does, and the mobile platform is no different from its other multimedia channels. ESPN said it plans to simulcast about 1,000 live events to handsets this year, and averages about 75 mobile video clips per day, along with complete episodes of some network broadcasts. That's in addition to about 63 million mobile alerts transmitted each month, a mobile website boasting more than 9 million unique users and an expanding suite of iPhone applications. "We see [mobile] as a major growth area for us, and importantly, people seem more likely to pay for content on mobile than they are for the PC, so that opens up additional opportunities," said John Zehr, ESPN Digital Media's Senior Vice President of Production and Product Development.

Of course, the same opportunities exist for ESPN's rivals--and its partners. This week Major League Baseball announced its At Bat 2009 application for the iPhone and iPod touch now offers all out-of-market live game broadcasts for a price of 99 cents per matchup. While MLB.TV Premium subscribers can still enjoy iPhone access to all major league games for $19.95 for the rest of the season, the new a la carte model could prove far more significant--as an article on the MLB.com website points out, "Whatever the game, just buy it as easily as you would a must-have song in Apple's iTunes Store." The comparison is apt: Major League Baseball is doing for sports buffs exactly what iTunes did for music fans, liberating them to pick and choose the specific content they want, on their own terms. If you're a casual baseball fan, a diehard traveling when your local team takes the field for a critical game or just a bored iPhone user looking for an inexpensive way to kill a few hours on a summer day, At Bat 2009 offers the content you want, without the subscription you don't.

Compare that to the National Football League, where out-of-market games are available solely via DirecTV's annual NFL Sunday Ticket package ($299.95 per year) and the only live matchups simulcast on mobile devices are the NFL Network's eight Thursday primetime showdowns, available via Sprint's exclusive NFL Mobile Live application. Baseball, long criticized as the stodgiest, most conservative major sport, is now far and away the most progressive in embracing the mobile channel--as football, basketball and golf take command over the own mobile destinies, it will be fascinating to watch how each sport exploits the platform to unveil new content distribution models, what those changes will mean for traditional content providers like ESPN and whether 3 hours and 15 minutes of mobile viewing could ultimately represent the rabid sports fan's average day, not month. -Jason

P.S. FierceMobileContent will not publish Monday in observance of the Labor Day holiday. Publication will resume Tuesday, Sept. 8.