ESPN phone, not so sweet music

Filed in archive Companies on February 23, 2006

Music lovers can take a pass on this article, because this is about sports. But the lesson here is the same. Don't artificially limit consumers. That's bad marketing and insulting.

The ESPN phone is here and already hyped with commercials on the TV channel. It comes with its own phone and calling plan. Walter Mossberg reviews it for the Wall Street Journal and writes "The sports content on this phone is excellent, but for most people, it's not worth the trade-offs in price, hassle and Web restrictions."

He slams espn in this excerpt:

Even worse, ESPN has crippled the phone's Web browser by blocking access to some sites. When I tried to go to several sites, including those of competitors like Sports Illustrated, I got a screen that said ESPN only allows you to go to "reviewed" sites it believes "work well on your ESPN phone." That's an outrageous level of control, in my view. You can get around this iron fist by doing a Google search in the Web browser and then clicking on one of the links Google produces, but that shouldn't be necessary.