ESPNDallas.com Set To Launch Before Next Week's "MNF" Game

By Eric Fisher, Staff Writer, SportsBusiness Journal

Bodenheimer Says ESPNDallas.com To Launch In Concert With "MNF" Game

ESPN/ABC Sports President George Bodenheimer confirmed that ESPNDallas.com will launch this coming Monday to coincide with the Cowboys' home game on ESPN's "MNF" against the Panthers. The site is the third in ESPN's emerging local content and advertising initiative, and the network used a similar strategy last week to launch ESPNBoston.com in concert with a Bills-Patriots "MNF" game at Gillette Stadium. Bodenheimer said yesterday at Interactive Advertising Bureau's MIXX Conference in N.Y., "What motivated us with local was the same thing that always motivates us -- our culture and passion to serve sports fans wherever they are. We were surprised by the quick start we had [this past spring] in Chicago, we launched Boston last week, and we're now looking forward to getting Dallas started." Destinations for N.Y. and L.A. are slated for an early '10 launch.

THERE IS NO BOX: Meanwhile, Bodenheimer continued his ongoing push to position ESPN as a platform-agnostic brand and not one focused primarily on TV with other ancillary products. "We ceased looking at ourselves as a TV company maybe 10 years ago," he said. "We didn't declare it in the middle of Times Square like, maybe, some others did. But we are absolutely agnostic in terms of how we serve content and work with advertisers. The simple aim is to be distributed as widely as possible." To that end, Bodenheimer said he does not subscribe to a common refrain in advertising circles in which many media entities are receiving "digital pennies" in exchange for lost "analog dollars." Said Bodenheimer, "We see the overall [advertising] pie getting bigger, and amid a tough economy, we're seeing good evidence that we're emerging out of that. ... I'm not worried about [lost ad revenue in digital] at all. People will pay for quality content and audiences that are proven out over time. So dimes, pennies, I think that's meaningless."

STILL LOOKING AT MOBILE: Bodenheimer also championed ESPN's advancing mobile efforts, which recently saw the release of several iPhone and Blackberry applications and will be joined by a forthcoming expansion of the MVP platform to Blackberry devices. "I think that's critically important. Sports is 99.9% live, and the nature of sports is based heavily in its immediacy. So mobile's definitely an important priority for us."