• The Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, August 8, 2007 10:46 AM

ESPN360 is receiving a much-needed overhaul. The Web-based sports video platform has struggled with its identity and its business model in four years of existence, and will now focus on live events, including a greatly expanded offering of college basketball and football games, smaller market competitions and live news conferences. ESPN.com will focus more on shorter sports news, highlighting analysis and archived shows. Collectively, the new 360 will stream over 2,000 live events in its first 12 months compared to 200 in 2006.

ESPN was part of the online video movement well-before the proliferation of broadband Web connections made it possible to reach the masses. Yet the sports giant has enjoyed little success with ESPN360, partly because it's hard to differentiate its video content from that of ESPN.com.

ESPN360's business model is similar to the way cable networks operate, charging ISPs to deliver content instead of getting individual subscribers to pay. But it turns out that ISPs--like Web users--don't want to pay for content, either. ESPN was able to recruit AT&T and Verizon for 360, but Time Warner Cable, Comcast Corp. and Cox Communications rejected the idea of paying for a service that would reach a limited number of consumers.

Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »