MobiTV, the wireless mobile television service, delivered more live sporting events in the first half of this month than ever in the company's history—driven by the NFL, college football and NASCAR coverage. With the increase in sports programming, the average viewing time per session for the service doubled and subscribers have increased 30 percent so far this year.
MobiTV streamed 59 live events the week ending Sept. 11, which accounted for 170 hours of its total programming. Professional football games were delivered through the NFL Mobile application, while college games will number more than 100 this season.
Included are all five BCS bowl games and 30 other bowl games, as well as analysis and highlights from ESPN's top college football programs, streamed through the ESPN Mobile channel in the MobiTV branded application.
MobiTV said it has learned that the sports coverage makes more people watch television on their mobile phones and watch for longer periods of time. The company launched an enhanced look and feel of its branded application this summer and saw the average viewing time per session double.
MobiTV streamed more than 100 million minutes of live game and event coverage during the recent 2010 World Cup, which, it said, validated the demand for high-profile live events for the mobile television audience.
MobiTV's platform is an end-to-end managed service for content ingestion, encoding and delivery of media for major mobile operators including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, as well as partners CBS, ESPN, MTV Networks, NBC and Warner Music.
The service delivers live television to all the major mobile device platforms including iPhone, RIM, BREW, Java, Android, WebOS, WinMo and Palm.
