• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, January 26, 2012

What’s unique about mobile? It’s a live experience. ESPN tries to capitalize on that by offering a surround experience across screens and through social properties like Twitter that let people interact. It also has a program set up for asking fans for feedback about their mobile experience with ESPN to help guide future development. Part of that will be to build up the network’s m-commerce offerings. In that vein, its added the opportunity for fans to buy tickets in partnership with StubHub as they’re browsing other content. It’s all about encouraging an impulse buy via mobile, says Bayle.

He also emphasizes there has to be a bridge with TV programming. He notes Winter X Games starting now are first live games to be “Shazam” enabled—allowing people to tag content they see, like music, photo galleries, and schedules, through the ESPN app.