No Free Score Update Text From ESPN For Sprint Customers.

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Sprint has quietly introduced a toll fee of one-half of one cent per message from business that broadcast text messages to members, like ESPN. While the charge seem tiny, it will add up if you have millions of customers and sent multiple messages like ESPN sending score updates. But remember Sprint already charges it's customers for both sending and receiving Text messages, as high as 20 cents a message for people who does not subscribe to a bundle plan.

So as expected Networks like ESPN, MSNBC and The Weather Channel have stooped sending messages through Sprint, according to GigaOM.

Sprint quietly reacted saying  "Sprint charges aggregators for text messaging programs such as the ESPN alerts.  This fee is a cost recovery measure designed to allow Sprint to continue to support the billions of text messages that businesses like ESPN send each year as part of mobile marketing campaigns, alerts, etc. The fee affects commercial use of Sprint’s text messaging platform only and is not charged by Sprint to our customers" 



Verizon also tried a few years back to charge three  business' for sending messages, but scraped it after business' protested.

You can read more at GigaOM.