Free Newsletter
Verizon Wireless strips NFL sponsorship from Sprint
Verizon Wireless announced a four-year sponsorship agreement with the National Football League, promising subscribers a wealth of NFL content highlighted by live streaming coverage of NBC's marquee Sunday Night Football broadcast. A Verizon spokesperson confirmed to FierceMobileContent that the deal makes Verizon Wireless the league's exclusive mobile media partner as well as its official wireless service sponsor, roles previously filled by Sprint, which has prominently featured the NFL in its advertising efforts in recent years. According to The Wall Street Journal, the new deal is valued at $720 million, including a rights fee and advertising spending--the earlier Sprint package was valued at $120 million.
The Verizon/NFL deal officially kicks off with mobile coverage of the 2010 NFL Draft, which begins Apr. 22--during the regular season, Verizon will introduce to mobile the NFL Network's NFL RedZone channel, which supplies live look-ins of every touchdown and signature play from the Sunday afternoon games. In addition to NBC's Sunday Night Football, Verizon will also simulcast the NFL Network's own Thursday Night Football matchups, with the cable channel's related football programming airing live 24/7/365.
Verizon's NFL Mobile package is also slated to include on-demand video and analysis from the NFL Network and NFL Films, fantasy information, news and statistics, and customizable alerts, ringtones and graphics. Verizon adds that information on specific handsets and associated pricing will be announced in August, prior to the start of the regular NFL season.
Sprint initially launched NFL Mobile in the fall of 2005, upgrading to the NFL Mobile Live application--complete with live radio broadcasts of all regular season games as well as all eight Thursday Night Football matchups--three years later. According to Sprint, the NFL Mobile Live app set the company's single-day record for downloads on Sept. 7, 2008, the first Sunday of the NFL campaign.
For more on the Verizon Wireless/NFL deal:
- read this release
Related articles:
NFL, DirecTV to offer Sunday Ticket package on mobile
Motorola teams with NFL stars to cover Super Bowl XLIV
Comments
Posted by Anonymous | March 9, 2010 - 2:19pm
This article makes it sound like Verizon won the sponsorship in some kind of competition with Sprint. But I read elsewhere that Sprint decided not to renew the sponsorship because the cost was getting so high, and Sprint didn't think they were going to get a good return on their investment.
Maybe you can check on this and update the article accordingly. Thanks.
Posted by Anonymous | March 10, 2010 - 10:26am
Talk about bias headlining! Read the press release from Sprint which came out yesterday morning, the NFL didn't DUMP Sprint, it's the other way around. Sprint CHOSE not to renew their "deal" with the NFL which they had to pay HUGE sums of money for it and because NFL was opressive with extensive unreasonable and draconian demands which yielded virtually ZERO return on that investment. Imagine yourself in the same situation for 5 years..."Hey I'll be your girlfriend only if you pay me $350 million per year and here's a laundry list of my expectations and demands, and by the way you get absolutely NOTHING from me in return!" How long do you think you'd keep that "relationship" and how insulted would you be when you finally kicked her to the curb and all your other friends kept saying she dumped you and moved on to someone better? In my book we'd call her a gold-digging B*tch!
Posted by Anonymous | August 4, 2010 - 11:46pm
Uh, I'm kind of pissed as a Sprint customer. Not my fault they didn't market it well. Verizon's ads have been pretty good. Fits in well with their "rule the air" slogan.
SHARE
WITH:
Comments (3) | Post a comment