Canadian Benjie Levy is committed to giving mobile sports consumers in North America choice. Chief operating officer and executive vice president of Score Media, Levy was the driver behind his company’s May 12 deal to acquire SportsTap.
The SportsTap acquisition means Score Media has the third largest U.S. audience of sports consumers on smartphone sports applications, trailing only Goliaths ESPN and Yahoo.
A corporate challenger speaks
In a statement, Levy said, “ScoreMobile’s acquisition of SportsTap brings together two innovative and popular services and positions us well to deliver even more exciting experiences for sports fans and creative solutions for our advertising partners.”
Two mobile sports application worth a look
Launched in 2007, SportsTap is available free through iPhone App Store and Android Market for free. Providing real-time NFL, Major League Baseball, NBA, NHL, NCAA, NASCAR, Futbol, Golf and Tennis scores, SportsTap includes drill downs to stats, player news and top stories. The app has automatic refreshes, and is an excellent choice for the mobile sports viewer on a budget.
Terms of the SportsTap acquisition were not disclosed, but ScoreMobile said it would operate SportsTap as a stand-alone company. Based in Toronto, Score Media operates The Score. A more robust application that includes a strong take on sports news and video, The Score is a portal for sports fans with a strong take. For example, The Score featured May 22 an excellent blog post and video about James Hardin’s flop against the Dallas Mavericks that most mobile sports viewers would consider a value-add to their sports knowledge.
Competition guards again mobile sports monopolies
Score Media’s acquisition of SportsTap is significant because it means not all companies are willing to cede the mobile sports application market to ESPN and Yahoo. If Score Media or others are able to retain enough consumers to woo big-budget advertisers and sponsors, it will likely be able to forge into live video broadcast. In turn, that would break ESPN’s potential stranglehold on live sports via mobile devices, and a charge-what-it-wants mentality. Consumers would benefit.
Is Levy an emerging industry’s Ted Turner?
With its bold move to acquire SpartsTap, ScoreMedia bears close watching, and prime placement on the menu of your mobile device. That is, unless you don’t believe consumers gained when Ted Turner acquired the Atlanta Braves and created a super station in the early days of cable.
