Football fans can help choose NCAA All-America players and create NFL fantasy football teams via text messaging with two new wireless services.
Cingular Wireless has teamed with ESPN and ABC Sports in encouraging mobile users to use short message service to vote for their picks for All-America Players of the Week. Voters can choose from one of four players each week, and each winner will be awarded a trophy and a $1,000 scholarship from Cingular in his name to his college. In the first week of December, fans will be encouraged to vote for a player of the year.
The service is available to subscribers of most wireless carriers, and an online voting system is also available.
Meanwhile, fans of the pro game can play fantasy football with SMSOfficePools, which has been acquired by Snocone Systems, Inc. For a $4 monthly fee, fans can check statistics updated in real time, purchase game tickets and download sports-related images and ring tones through the service.
Other offerings from SMSOfficePools include auto racing and hockey pools, and corporate customers are encouraged to have a custom pool integrated directly into their Web sites. The company plans to create new sports-related revenue streams, including allowing users to shop for sports merchandise from their computers or mobile phones.
Finally, Microsoft Corp. has added football content, including scores, standings, statistics and game information to the MSN Direct sports channel, which is accessible on the company’s Smart Watches.
“We’re excited to deliver more new content and features to Smart Watches with this new release of MSN Direct,” said Eric Lang, general manager of the Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT) initiative at Microsoft. “People are on the go and need to easily access information that is important to them, whether that’s getting a message from home, checking a sports score or seeing what the weather is like.”
MSN direct already offers similar baseball and basketball services for Smart Watches.
In addition to the new football content, Microsoft said it is now offering two new watch faces from the MSN Direct Web site.
