In using the excellent (if sometimes buggy) NFL Mobile app this football season, I did notice one new annoying thing: 
The app requires you to turn on location services before it lets you watch games, a relationship I struggled to understand since there is no geographic blackout or anything else rights-related with the games that are carried by the app.
Turns out, the reason for the link is that Verizon is selling the aggregate data they get from mining their audience’s locations, a topic Verizon discusses in depth with Fierce Wireless. Though the security aspects of having my phone company aggressively marketing my location data doesn’t bother me that much (having to turn on and off the GPS is a bigger pain to me), Karl Bode over at DSL Reports smartly points out that the promises of big carriers like Verizon don’t really mean that much because the companies regularly assist the government when asked for cell phone data.
I get it that Verizon wants to monetize its services more, but worry that heavy handed continued data mining like the NFL Mobile app experience tilts too far in favor of the big paying customer (here the NFL) over the small paying customer, the average fan. Compared on a one-to-one basis, there’s no way to equate the worries of one person who doesn’t like to turn on GPS services (drains the battery!) to the needs or paying desires of a client like the NFL. But in the long run such unbalanced focus will lead to nobody using such apps if they are loaded with hoops you have to jump through simply to let Verizon earn more bucks.
