Verizon Wireless has teamed up with the NCAA to be able to offer full coverage of the 2008 college bowl games to subscribers of their MediaFLO-powered VCAST Mobile TV service. Starting with the Poinsetta Bowl on December 20th and going through to the GMAC Bowl on January 6th, Verizon VCAST Mobile TV customers can tune in to ESPN, CBS, or FOX Mobile TV to get live, full coverage directly on their handsets.
Personally, I don’t really see the draw of watching a sporting event on your mobile phone. I can understand movies and whatnot, as they typically involve close ups and that sort of thing. I can only imagine trying to figure out the score on a 2.4″ QVGA screen. I’ve also not actually used VCAST Mobile TV, so there’s a big chance that they’ve thought of that and developed some way to overcome.
Mobile digital TV is something that has been coming for a long time, and never really got much of a following, at least not as much as industry analysts had hoped. Deals like this, bringing high-demand programming to the mobile handset is certainly exciting and will hopefully drum up more excitement and use.