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The Sports Network is the largest privately owned international sports information wire service in North America, providing hundreds of clients, and literally millions of viewers world-wide, with up-to-the-minute sports information, ranging from NFL to Rugby, MLB to Cricket and virtually everything in-between. TSN is well positioned as an international real-time sports wire service with customers throughout North America, Asia and Europe.

While Mickey Charles is the President and CEO of Computer Information Network, Inc., the parent company but known within the industry and world-wide as The Sports Network, he is an attorney by training. Mickey’s background includes a wide range of interests and accomplishments among which are newspaper syndication, hosting a national sports talk show, being a feature editor for a number of publications … print and Internet such as iGaming, MEI and GBGC, writing on a myriad of topics ranging from telecommunications to travel, responding to requests as panelist, moderator and chair-person at seminars, conventions, trade shows and conferences.

Sports Activated spoke to Mickey Charles back in 2008, at a time when he had predicted a major trend in mobile content delivery at which point TSN had established various partnerships with technology providers and was positioned to expand their content services in Asia (and eventually Africa and Europe) with an initial focus on soccer. Where does TSN stand in these markets today?

“The Asian market is a very difficult market to break into”, said Mickey Charles referring to past partners who had attempted to deliver mobile content in that part of the world in 2008. “That corner of the world, a rather large one, can be a rather ‘closed’ market to foreign companies, save those with an exceptional global presence, such as the NBA.” As for the African market, Charles does not see TSN pursuing anything there at the moment in terms of either coverage or market penetration. But he did point out, “Europe is a whole other story for us. We are deeply into Europe right now, covering every soccer league and every match in real-time with our partners at Global Sports Media.” Charles noted that TSN’s work in Europe will only increase into 2011, galvanized by partnerships on that continent.

Charles points out that “Entering into another country can be a difficult thing for anyone, if you are going to compete with (those companies) that are already entrenched in that market.” This is where Charles highlights the importance of providing content that is unique to a particular country or continent. The Sports Network, being a global sports content provider, is well positioned to provide sports content inherently different than most local competitors in Europe and this is where TSN is successful. “When you have what (European competitors) do not have … for example, the interests in the NFL, NBA, and world coverage that we have – Olympics, soccer, tennis, golf, Formula One, boxing and a list much too long to detail here, then we have entry,” says Charles, “that allows TSN to become much more entrenched in that market, wherever it may be, in 2011.

The Sports Network’s diverse content coverage allows them to solidify their global position also in key markets, with specific interests in particular sports.

“The NHL is our client so, consequently, due to the instant hockey information that we have, we pretty much dominate all of Canada in terms of penetration, client reach and growth,” Charles says, “Now we are looking to the Scandinavian countries and they, of course, have a major interest in hockey– that is good for us…very good.” The trend in the mobile sports market has been one that Mickey Charles had prognosticated back in 2008, predicting that it would be one of the largest areas of growth in the world of sports technology. Fast forward 3 years and the mobile world has become inundated with apps and sports content.

Where does TSN sit amongst them? As Charles points out, “Don’t get confused with the holders of the data and the application developers. Content provider means someone that creates, manipulates, gathers, dispenses the content and then there are people and companies who purchase the licenses for the content. With mobile having grown as it has, exponentially, the way I, frankly, predicted as much as 5 and 6 years ago that it would. People want to get into that (market). I think (what will happen) is that the big bears will eventually take over the space. It is the nature of technology, the Internet, the world. Merge, acquire, integrate and eliminate competition.”

What does that mean for the smaller application developers and “content licensees” providing content purchased from the “actual” content providers such as TSN? Charles says that although smaller companies may be able to survive in a “niche” market, they will not be able to compete with the Yahoos, ESPNs and TSNs of the world. Especially since the content providers themselves are developing their own mobile sports apps, including The Sports Network. “We, as the source, can provide an application that can probably out-do anybody else, other than a client with whom we are working very closely and whose application might be equal to our own.”

What’s in store for the mobile market in the future? According to Charles, the expedited delivery of the sports content will be the next trend– one that he says The Sports Network is already providing. “What will happen eventually, as we see it, (and we set the pace in a number of areas), will be giving clients direct access to the databases.” This eliminates the parsing of data, therefore increasing the transfer speed and be potentially less costly for TSN’s clients. Once our clients can do that, they can make the product that evolves more easily available for their users.”

What would a discussion about sports technology trending be without the mention of 3D? Just as we thought, Mickey Charles has that covered. TSN plans to combine 3D technology with the sports content and game cast services, taking their mobile content presence to a new level. “Those will be key components as sports viewers continue to immerse themselves into the internet-connected TVs and mobile products.” The company has already undertaken test case studies with the 2010 World Cup and Masters Tournament of golf to understand how this technology will best be applied. Charles predicts that TSN will lead the way in mobile 3D.

He says that introducing 3D imaging to their game casts will be yet another trend that will be set by TSN. Charles points out that, in past concepts of online content delivery, TSN was the first of many to do so. “What we did first, before anyone else, was the branding/hosting of our content on sites, taking that concept and technology, meshing content and branding it so that it looked, felt and, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be the client’s website.”

The concept of branding sports websites, as Charles explains, is an example of how The Sports Network led the way of online content by creating a page hosted by his company (and their data) but matching it to the entire client website (except for a small notice at the bottom of the page saying “Powered by The Sports Network”. Charles’ company was also one of the first to provide Ajax scoreboards, which is now a commonly used delivery method of content. Mickey Charles says that “I believe that (my technical experts) are clever enough to understand sports better than anyone else and, consequently, able to come up with new and exciting concepts on an ongoing basis.” As each new concept, area of creativity, inventiveness and technology is made known he has learned to accept the reality that it will eventually be imitated by many that lag behind and, as he concluded, “It is the nature of what we do.”