• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, February 10, 2010

The 2004 comedy "Dodgeball" refers to a would-be ESPN 8, tabbed "The Ocho." Soon, there will be just five to go to make the lampoon a reality. The online live sports hub, ESPN360.com, will be rebranded ESPN3.com in April.

ESPN3 ("The Tres"?) will be available in 50 million homes, free to subscribers of broadband providers that have agreed to pay ESPN a TV-style fee to offer it.

ESPN has not used Web lexicon recently in referring to ESPN360 -- classifying it instead as a network. In a statement, ESPN executive Sean Bratches, who oversees marketing, said the ESPN3 switch "closely aligns with the existing name convention" for ESPN channels. Expansion from the 1979 flagship began with ESPN2 in 1993.

ESPN360 has gone through multiple iterations before adopting its current role as a site for streaming live -- sometimes premium -- events, from the NBA playoffs to Wednesday's Duke-North Carolina basketball game.

With 360 free to customers, ESPN has found itself sometimes in the so-called "cord-cutting" debate. MSOs have soured on cable networks' offering the same content gratis on the Web that customers pay for, fearing it could eventually lead to people dropping their subscriptions.

Whether that worry was justified, many large broadband providers resisted offering it for some time, including Comcast and Cox, which signed on last year. Time Warner Cable and Cablevision still don't. AT&T and Verizon were early adopters, perhaps hoping to draw some customers away from cable competition.

Last year, 360 began offering what it referred to as dynamic ad insertions, which brought a run of TV-style ads into the streams of live games. Interestingly, the advertising was welcomed by some. ESPN had used commercial breaks to air its own promos, often running the same ones frequently to possible adverse effect.

ESPN said the April 4 debut of ESPN3 will bring some new features to the site, presumably on the technical side.

Users currently can switch between multiple games at once. There is a DVR-like ability to rewind, and some events are archived for replay.