Watercooler Blog

When it was reported all over the Web last week that Disney was officially joining Hulu, one of the first things that went through my mind was that it would finally be easier to watch ESPN clips and replays.  Not that it’s exceptionally difficult today, but if you want to watch a full replay of a game, you have to go to ESPN360 and jump through some hoops to get to the game you want.  And as I’ve said on the TVLoop blog, the Move Networks player that Disney uses for ABC and ESPN content isn’t the most user friendly experience.  So the thought of getting access to ESPN archives in an easy flash player like Hulu was very attractive.

But that’s not going to happen.  Eye on Sports Media has confirmed that the deal will not include ESPN.  Why?  That part is unclear, but it’s definitely bad news for sports fans.  Fox Sports made its BCS college football bowl game available on Hulu after the games were over and it was a great place to watch replays.  I don’t mind using ESPN360 to watch live games, but it’s a bit of a hassle for replays.  It seems to me that the network could expose its content to a more casual sports fan by making it available on Hulu.

And don’t underestimate the power of the embeddable Hulu video player.  Allowing viewers to take video to go is a great way to let your core fans do your marketing for you.  What a better way to expand the ESPN brand than allowing bloggers and other users to embed ESPN videos on their respective sites via the Hulu player.  We’ve already seen what that can do for brands such as Saturday Night Live, so it stands to reason that ESPN could realize similar benefits.  For now though, we’ll have to wait to see if that Disney has a change of heart once the relationship kicks off.