ESPN has launched a redesign of ESPN.com in beta that offers a simpler design and navigation for its users.

The new site had been in a closed beta test phase for 10 days to ESPN Insider subscribers and will now run along side the current ESPN.com for the rest of December. The redesigned site will launch fulltime on Monday, January 5 and replace the current site.

ESPN has partnered with social networking site Bebo to bring short-form sports video highlights to the site for U.S. users.

Enthusiastic sports fans account for 19 percent of overall online users and represent a lucrative online audience according to a new report from JupiterResearch.

Since serious sports fans spend more time online, watch more online video and shop more online, sports sites need to integrate the right balance of video and social features into their destinations, the report found.

ESPN has partnered with AOL to make its short-form video content accessible through AOL Video and AOL Sports.

It’s the first time that ESPN has made its video content available through an Internet portal. ESPN will provide highlights from games and sporting events along with video clips via an embedded ESPN video player.

I might let you call me a prophet, a little earlier than expected. I kid, I kid, and I was kidding in March 2006 when I asked readers not to call me that for another 20 years. It wasn’t too hard to predict, thanks to a Microsoft patent about it, and in 2008 comes the next stage: ESPN’s coverage of professional video gaming.

Research shows that half of the agency/client relationships out there last less than two years.

This is from a sample of about 140 companies with an annual marketing spend of at least $2 million, including Citibank, General Mills, IBM, GE, and ESPN.

After nearly 15 years in agencies, this percentage sounds about right. But where the research tries to determine why this is the case, I take issue with it.

Microsoft has partnered with ESPN to bring college basketball and other programming available for download to its Xbox 360 video game console.

If you are a fan of the NBA but do not have cable than you will be glad to know that you can watch ESPN’s NBA games live online starting this season.

Nielsen and ESPN are partnering to create a model to measure people’s use of media on a number of platforms including television, the Internet and mobile devices.

AT&T announced today that it is partnering with ESPN College GameDay host Chris Fowler and analyst Kirk Herbstreit this fall for "Confessions of a College Football Junkie," a series of weekly video clips available on AT&T 3G wireless handsets.

The Founder of ESPN, Bill Rasmussen, launched today CollegeFanz.com, an interactive site focused on college sports and their fans.

Online advertisers focusing on new car buyers can tailor how quickly their advertising reaches their intended audience by understanding the difference between daily and monthly Web site traffic patterns, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2007 Online Media Study.

Tennis fans need not be limited in their Wimbledon viewing by the capricious whims of broadcast networks, thanks to another season of Winbledon Live online.

ESPN has announced they are purchasing Cricinfo, a cricket Web site, from the Wisden group.

The Worldwide Leader in Sports may be as soft as Chuck Liddell’s jaw when it comes to acknowledging other outlets for sports commentary exist online.

With March Madness having arrived marketers will be vying for the attention of sports fans across multiple channels. Ad spending on the games is estimated to be over a half a billion dollars this year, according to TNS Media Intelligence.

All of the March Madness games combined brings in more ad money than the Super Bowl. More than $2.73 billion has been spent on network TV advertising during the tournament this decade. This year’s March Madness ad spending will be 70 percent more than it was in 2000.

Audio and visual search start-up Pluggd claims they have perfected their product. What does this mean for competing sites?

Yahoo is no longer serving contextual text link ads on ESPN’s website, losing the publisher to rival Quigo, who scored a multi-year agreement.

The ESPN website will stop using Yahoo for its text ads, choosing instead to go with Quigo and its AdSonar product to deliver those advertisements instead.

A trio of big-name brands will take different approaches to profiting from online video, varying through partnerships, services, and charging ISPs to carry their content.

Yahoo dominates the global soccer showcase as the host of the official website for the World Cup, and other sites offer Cup-related services. Even though the talking heads on ESPNRadio and local sports radio shows have nothing but disdain for soccer and its occasional 1-0 scores…