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ESPN.com: A timeline

HISTORY IN THE MAKING
A recap of key events in the history of ESPN.com

1995 — ESPNet SportsZone, a partnership between ESPN and Starwave Corp., makes its debut.

1996 — Debut of GameCast, a Java-based product providing live scoreboards and statistics of games in progress.

1997-98 — ESPN parent Walt Disney Co. through two transactions buys Starwave from billionaire founder Paul Allen. ESPN creates ESPN Internet Ventures.

1998 — Site renamed ESPN.com.

2000 — Debut of Page 2, offering a more offbeat and humorous take on sports. Page 2 would shut down in 2012, but elements live on elsewhere in ESPN.com and Grantland.com.

2001 — Debut of Spanish-language version ESPNdeportes.com.

2001 — Deal struck to be the exclusive sports channel content provider for Microsoft’s MSN portal. It runs for three years and provides a major boost to ESPN.com traffic.

2002 — Debut of ESPNMotion, allowing broadband users to view automatically loading streaming video on the home page. Developed in part by Walt Disney Imagineering, ESPN Motion would help pave the way for ventures in live and on-demand streaming video. A Miami-Rutgers football game that October represents ESPN.com’s first live game webcast.

2005 — Shift to fantasy football games from strictly a paid service to free, helping generate what would become a historic mushrooming in consumer interest in fantasy games.

2005 — ESPN360.com, the company’s primary portal for streaming video, debuts. It would later shift from an on-demand focus to live events and was renamed ESPN3 in 2010.

2006 — Debut of Mobile ESPN, ESPN’s attempt to create a mobile virtual network. The effort was a flop, not surviving the year and costing the company $150 million. Lessons from Mobile ESPN would be applied to successful ventures in subsequent years.

2007-08 — Acquisition of several digital entities devoted to developing global and scholastic sports, including Cricinfo.com, Scrum.com, Jayski.com and Student Sports Inc.

2009 — Localized versions of ESPN.com placed in Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles and New York.

2011— Debut of Grantland.com in partnership with Bill Simmons.

2012 — ESPN rebrands and relaunches ESPNSoccernet as ESPNFC, which becomes one of the world’s largest online soccer destinations.

2013 — Establishment of a comScore traffic record for any U.S. digital sports entity with 72.7 million unique users in September. ESPN has since set four more sports category records, reaching a high of 93.97 million unique users domestically in January 2015.

Sources: ESPN, SportsBusiness Journal research

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