Disney today shuttered Mobile ESPN after just a 9-month run, fueling speculation that the MVNO business model may be unsustainable. The media conglomerate said it would continue its mobile content efforts under a different strategy, offering its sports news and programming over other operators’ decks, instead of its own.

Long before it launched at this year’s Superbowl, Mobile ESPN was hailed as one of the new breeds of MVNOs that could offer high-dollar timely content to a very targeted demographic, making it the front runner of what was expected to be a new wave of boutique virtual operators. After its initial Superbowl splash, however, the service fell off the radar, and Mobile ESPN kept mum, releasing no data about its financial performance or subscriber gains. Last summer though, financial analysts began blasting Mobile ESPN and the other MVNOs claiming their performance was far more disappointing than expected, which lead to speculation that the Disney would have to abandon the effort.

In an interview on Wednesday before the closure announcement, former Disney executive and current managing director of Clearstone Venture Partners William Quigley said that ESPN Mobile’s recent poor performance was due in part to poor planning and vertical integration by Disney, but mainly due to the content-centric business model the carrier adopted.

“With Mobile ESPN, I think the price was too high to start,” said Quigley, who spent six years in business planning and operations at Disney. “$40 per month is a lot to pay for content--some of it unique, but some of it available elsewhere. … I think [Mobile ESPN's difficulties] show that people aren’t willing to pay that much for a pure content approach. I think they will pay more and stay longer with a provider of a quality network.”

While Mobile ESPN may go to the dustbin, Disney has one more MVNO under its belt, Disney Mobile, a family-oriented service that launched this summer. Though Disney has likewise released no performance data on its other virtual operator, the service has received some industry accolades for its location-tracking family monitoring service and its mPortal-designed content application. It also doesn’t appear to be backing away from the venture either as it launched its TV advertising campaign for the service this month.

In fact, market research firm Compete believes that Disney may have pulled the plug on Mobile ESPN too soon, not giving the operator time to adjust after its early mistakes, nor giving it a full holiday season or even a full football season to test its mettle. Compete said its research indicated climbing traffic to Mobile ESPN’s website in recent month, signaling growing interest in the service. It also said that the MVNO’s very narrow demographic required time to nurture. Most wireless subscribers are locked in long-term traffic making initial sign-up slow, but that same demographic is also highly tolerant to advertising, presenting a way for Mobile ESPN to build revenue without charging high content fees, Compete concluded.

Attention now turns to the other new MVNOs, including Disney Mobile, to see if they succeed in turning their content-models into revenue and subscribers. Amp’d Mobile recently released its first performance data, and though it had only recorded 50,000 subscribers in 10 months of service, it only this summer began ramping up its advertising efforts and establishing retail sales channels apart from its web portal. Amp’d predicted growth to pick up into he holiday season, giving it 150,000 subscribers by year-end.

"It's important that we do not over-react to this as the end of MVNOs," M:Metrics senior analysts Seamus McAteer said in a research note. "In the end, asking consumers to view a brand with a connotation as purely a media company as a provider of telephony is too great of a conceptual leap. Brands like Virgin, a lifestyle brand, or brands that are already providers of communications services, such as a cable company or ISP, stand a much better chance as an MVNO, as do companies that are pure-play MVNOs."

And the closure of ESPN Mobile certainly doesn’t spell the end of ESPN content on the mobile handset deck. ESPN said it would continue to license content to carriers, and given it’s status as the leading Sports brand across several media, it’s content is some of the most attractive out there for mobile operators. Mobile ESPN also developed some interesting applications such as its UIEvolutin-developed Sidebar sports news and information tracker, which ran on the idle screen of its phones. Those applications could be used to establish third-party relationships with customers using other carriers’ services.

On ESPN Mobile’s website, Disney posted a notice saying it would continue to maintain the service for its existing customers, but would allow any customer to switch to another carrier or cancel service at no charge. It also said it would refund the cost of the phones once the contract was terminated.