Eurosport for iPhone

Eurosport just launched an iPhone application (designed by Backelite).
It is free. What do we get ? Four sections for each sport: Headlines, in brief, Live and results. Everything can be filtered by sport: football, rugby, tennis, bikeracing, skiing, etc. The headline "Live" looks promising but it is not live video, only the simple scores of an ongoing sporting event.

Customization is possible; once you discover how to do it. You can choose the country (among major countries of Europe and China but not the USA or India). Select a country, and its language - only one - follows: if you choose Germany, everything is in German (you cannot have it in Italian or French). Regardless of the country chosen, the sports offered are the same: you cannot get ping pong if you choose China. But you get Bundesliga (German soccer) with Germany and Calcio (Italian soccer) with Italy. You can also set a link to Facebook account to share results blow by blow with "friends".
This iPhone application is a perfect tool for sports fans : simple, always on, always within reach. Short news, concise. If you want more, go to the net, and if you want to watch, there is TV, which has a de facto legal monopoly when it comes to sports.

• Although Eurosport is an international TV network (owned by French Group TF1), there is no link of any kind to the network's TV programs, not a single word.
• How about competition? The major international competition for Eurosport is ESPN; the American TV sports group (Disney) has already launched many applications for iPhone, only aiming at American football fans. Until now.
• But since ESPN is invading European soccer the situation might change soon. ESPN is now on Freeview, the digital terrestrial platform in UK (DTT) and on BT Vision (IPTV). This follows the buying of soccer rights from Setanta Sports (our post from July 5, 2009). ESPN will certainly publish an application for British soccer.
• No application from either of these operators for android. The iPhone has a  huge competitive advantage from its rich and diversified application store. android lags far behind for the time being.