FanSection Blog

The first thing I thought about when I saw that the US Men’s National Team was playing Mexico in a FIFA World Cup Qualifier today was “I hope ESPN360 is carrying the game.”  While I assumed the Worldwide Leader would be streaming the match from Columbus, OH since it was being shown live on ESPN2, you never know.  So I was very happy when I visited ESPN.com at 4pm PST this afternoon to see the “Watch Live” button next to the score.  I promptly clicked the link and was treated to a flawless 2 hours of live streaming that almost made me feel as if I was watching it on my 42″ plasma.

I’ve watched many games on ESPN360 in the past, but have not always had the experience I had today.  Being a University of Texas fan on the west coast means that I often have to turn to alternative means of watching my games and ESPN360 carries most regional ABC feeds.  However, much of the time, the live stream is choppy and many times I’ve had to shut down the site, restart it, shut it down again, and so on until the video actually appears in a stable way.  But with the re-design of the ESPN.com site, it appears as if they have also decided to take a new look at ESPN360 as well.  Here’s the new look of the main page:

ESPN redesigned the website several months ago and we previously covered it here and here, and it seemed as if video would be more prominently promoted. But the ESPN360 redesign is fairly recent, and I must say, is a significant improvement over the previous version both in visual design and video quality.  If this one game is any indication of what I can expect come football season, I can’t wait for September.