How to effectively make use of the ESPN app? 

(useful points for All Fans)

Who is the ESPN? 

 Entertainment and Sports Programming Networks (ESPN) is a multinational and multimedia sports broadcasting company that broadcasts sports 24 hours a day. The company handles various kinds of sports programmes such as football, basketball, rugby, boxing, MMA and so on. ESPN has around 8000 employees to make better quality of sports broadcasting in the world and the employees are trying to recognise sports fans' opinions to build the better ESPN for the future. Also, ESPN is making an effort for understanding their fans needs of contents as the multimedia and multinational company. The concept of understanding and classifying fans' needs is really significant part for the sports organisation to maintain existed fans and increase new fans because their role in the sport industry is important. Many sport fans want to know about their favourite sports teams', players' and sports' information by accessing various media. Therefore, ESPN needs to have proper and various sports media to satisfy their fans. Then ESPN decided to create wide range of sport contents for the fans in 2016. Also, ESPN has strong power in the media industry as there are over 30 million Twitter followers in ESPN. 

Fans' needs and trends 

The growth rate of smartphone users is very outstanding over the last few years. Between the number of smartphone and desktop users has been changed a lot since 2013. The figure 1 shows that number smartphone users to access digital media is growing fast. 

figure 1: Changing of digital media users (2008-2015)

Source: smart insights (2015)

figure 2: Growth in digital media users through smartphone(2013-2016)

Source:Comscore (2017)

The figure 2 shows that the consumption of smartphone for digital media has approximately doubled since 2013 even though the desktop users have decreased steadily. It could have effect on the sports media businesses to understand fans and develop new strategies for the sport fan and enhance companies brand. Also, the ESPN president mentions that ESPN has the strong position in the sport media industry and the president already notices that importance of media and it changes constantly.  

ESPN smartphone application for their fan

To cater the rapid growth of smartphone users who want to get some useful information, ESPN has well designed snd structured application.

Everybody needs to put their own personal details when they use the ESPN app at the first time. Through this, ESPN could grasp that which age, gender are main consumers (figure 3). In addition, there is other useful useful functions to add favourite teams and sport (figure 4). 

Figure 3: require personal information

Source:ESPN smartphone app         

 Figure 4: possible to add favourite team and sports

Source: ESPN smartphone app

 ESPN has really great alter system for their fans. The figure 5 indicate that the app offers when is the football match start. Also,after press the 'bell', there are more specific alter details that you might want. For example, match start time, goal and statistics. in addition, fans can get news from the football front through 'Breaking News' alter function. 

Figure 5: alert system for the fan

Source: ESPN smartphone app

There are many various sports fans in the world and people around the world has different favourite sports. ESPN announces that they are trying to consider many countries and sports for various fan. ESPN has nice editions of the app for many countries such as Mexico, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, india, Australia and UK. Here is other strong point of ESPN app. Sport fans who use the ESPN app can choose their nation or interesting nations having certain sports. For example, if British users who like Kabbadi, they can get some information about that sport by choosing India server. Because, the ESPN app for the UK people do not offer the Kabbadi (figure 6). 

Figure 6: The way to get unpopular sports

Source: ESPN smartphone app

There are some weakness points also existed in the ESPN app. There are a plenty of EPL, UEFA, NBA, NFL and MLB information in the app. Nonetheless, some unpopular sports' have insufficient information at the app. To make more various fans, ESPN needs to enhance more information and serve similar useful features to unpopular sports page in the app.







Justification

through the digital television and mobile phone, more sport fans can access the sport media(Blain & Bernstein, 2002). also, sports organisation try to consider sports fan engagement these days sport business industry (Geurin-Eaglenman, 2016), because sport fans have an important role in the sport business(Trenberth & Hassan, 2011). Fan engagement can be defined as that fan consume some goods and services from their favourite team and share their opinions with other people (Yoshida, Gordon, Nakazawa & Biscaia, 2014). Also, the reason why fans are important is they want to increase their favourite teams' revenue (Yoshida, Gordon, Nakazawa & Biscaia, 2014).





reference

Blain, N. & Bernstein, A. (2002) Sport, media, culture: Global and local dimensions. London: Frank Cass Publishers.

Chaffee, D. (2015). Insights from KPCB US and global internet trends 2015 report. Available: http://www.smartinsights.com/internet-marketing-statistics/insights-from-kpcb-us-and-global-internet-trends-2015-report/. Last accessed 10th Feb 2017.

ESPN. (2017) ESPN, Inc. Fact Sheet. Available: http://espnmediazone.com/us/espn-inc-fact-sheet/. Last accessed 9^th Feb 2017.

Geurin-Eagleman, A. (2016) Media and communications. In: Byers, T. (ed.) Contemporary Issues in Sport Management. London: Sage. pp.124-134.

Lella, A. (2017). Smartphone Usage Has Doubled in the Past Three Years. Available: https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Blog/Smartphone-Usage-Has-Doubled-in-the-Past-Three-Years. Last accessed 10th Feb 2017.

Nagle, D . (2016) ESPN, Inc.: 2016 in Review – Strong Today, Stronger Tomorrow. Available: http://espnmediazone.com/us/press-releases/2016/12/espn-inc-2016-review-strong-today-stronger-tomorrow/. Last accessed 9th Feb 2017

Ota, K. (2015) ESPN Digital Media Starts 2015 with New All-Time Record: 94 Million Unique Users in January. Available: http://espnmediazone.com/us/press-releases/2015/02/espn-digital-media-starts-2015-new-time-record-94-million-unique-users-january/. Last accessed 9th Feb 2017.

Trenberth, L & Hassan, D. (2012) Managing Sport Business an introduction, London: Routledge.

Yoshida, M., Gordon, B., Nakazawa, M., & Biscaia, R. (2014) Conceptualization and measurement of fan engagement: Empirical evidence from a professional sport context. Journal of Sport Management. 28, (4), pp 399-417.