We reported back in September on the partnership between The Sports Network and Contec Innovations to grow international service to mobile phone users. Now, we’re seeing the largest outgrowth of that relationship.

TSN and Contec are nearing the launch of a worldwide sports information service that will cover a wide variety of sports, drawing from TSN’s already global reach, and be available on any network and any handset. The service will be available for branding by mobile service providers seeking to enhance their offerings to customers and will reportedly be mostly supported by advertising.

Greater access to sports information and statistics can only help enhance the capabilities of foreign markets to access American fantasy games and for interested American fantasy players to take part in contests overseas, such as those centered on English Premier League soccer.

“Fantasy has not really played a role in what we see as an obvious and palpably apparent direction to pursue: the world of sports brought to users on the one communicative vehicle that almost never leaves their side — the mobile phone,” TSN founder, president and CEO Mickey Charles tells FSB.com. “Fantasy is the natural outgrowth of the effort, as will be other games that we have planned but that remain unannounced currently for clearly recognizable reasons, the same that keep us in the forefront of the industry.”

Charles says the venture arrives with the “clear-cut intention of opening the marketplace to a vast audience that will be attracted to participation that they believed necessitated access to the Internet until now.”

TSN and Contec have already built a strong mobile presence in the Far East, offering content in Chinese, Thai and Bahasa Indonesian, but Charles says his company is also focusing on Europe. He points to TSN’s exclusive deal with the NHL as a valuable resource there, as the league is popular in Scandinavian countries. Eventually, the partners plan to offer content in more than 100 languages.

Tags: contec, fantasy sports, fantasy sports business, fantasy sports industry, mickey charles, mobile phone, sports network

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 4th, 2009 at 11:18 pm and is filed under Fantasy Sports Market Research, Lead Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.