Sporting News today introduced its dramatically reworked iPad experience, the Sporting News App, that combines original content, aggregated material from other news outlets, and a new navigation structure. Abandoning the pay model used since early last year for the now-shuttered Sporting News Today, the free app seeks to more fully leverage the tablet's capabilities with video, live scoring and other multimedia elements. Content will be updated at 5:00am ET each day, again at 5:00pm, and then periodically throughout with scores and live updates. "What we're after is a very rich, very customizable experience that if you want to lean back and read it like a magazine, you can, but if you want to lean forward and consume it like a website, you can do that, too," said Sporting News President and Publisher Jeff Price. "This is something that will be much more free-flowing and much more native to the iPad [than Sporting News Today]. We believe strongly in tablets, and that if we can be among the first movers with a really rich product, we can have something that can really scale." Launch sponsors for the app are AT&T and Toyota, with the outlet selling category exclusives for the other sport-specific sections of content. Sporting News initially held high hopes for Sporting News Today as a pay product, sold for $2.99 per month. But Price said, "The things we saw sell online in our vertical were exclusive live video, some fantasy and gambling information. Those aren't our businesses. And what we had just couldn't scale." The Sporting News App was built with the aid of N.Y.-based startup Treesaver and L.A.-based PublishThis, which also worked with the Sporting News on its online relaunch last year. Sporting News is owned by American City Business Journals, parent company of THE DAILY and SportsBusiness Journal.
