Freeband TV News

Mobile TV is a clear winner at the World Cup

Written by Robin Hague

More than 700 million watch the Oranjeboot final on every device imaginable

Football never really broke out and the barroom brawl final was the worst in history, but the 2010 World Cup has been a break-out success for broadcasting, boasting the best sports television yet, with big gains for mobile TV and even 3D, all beamed to a massive global audience.

In the four short years since the last World Cup finals, in Germany in 2006, much has of course evolved within the broadcasting industry, not least of which the rise of mobile television, driven along by better and smarter handsets. Camera and broadcasting processing technologies and media management systems have also left 2006 standing. And, 3DTV, while still very far away from being any sort of consumer mainstay, wasn’t much more than a twinkle in the eye.

At this World Cup, so beautifully presented by Host Broadcast Services, aided and abetted by the likes of Harmonic, television has made big strides forwards. 25 of the 64 matches were broadcast in 3D, mostly to audiences in sports bars and pubs, for whom the pictures inevitably become blurrier, 3D specs or no. The special urgency and dynamism that 3D brings to televised sports will be key to the technology’s success in moving out of the bar and into the living room and the World Cup has been 3D television’s most persuasive argument yet.

Then there’s mobile television, for which the World Cup has also been a significant boon, playing a must-have support role to its big-screen big brother.

Even before the semi-finals and final matches, MobiTV reported it had streamed more than 88 million minutes of World Cup soccer, which it somewhat eerily observed was the equivalent of one person spending 61,111 consecutive days in front of the TV. 167 years.

Kay Johansson, MobiTV’s very pleased CTO noted: "our performance in delivering a global event like World Cup to millions of subscribers is a testament to the strength of our technology platform, and our commitment to delivering a reliable, compelling experience to viewers."

For FLO TV, another mobile television operator, its coverage of three of the matches ranked among the company’s most viewed programmes ever, the average viewership “spiking to 41 minutes on June 22, driven by the Mexico-Uruguay game.”

"What this tells us is that the next best thing to being in the stadium might just be watching it on your mobile device," said a confident Bill Stone, president of FLO TV.

That’s probably going quite a bit too far. Certainly, a beered-up World Cup fan watching 3D pictures in a sportsbar would rightly promote their own experience and most people still preferred to watch the world’s second biggest sporting event in the comfort of their own home.

However, mobile television has clearly made a success out of the World Cup and the practice and benefits of watching content on the go can only have been reinforced by the many millions of minutes mobile users have spent determinedly peering at their screens.

According to Allot Communications, mobile broadband usage increased by 24% during the 2010 FIFA World Cup matches. Web browsing on mobile broadband experienced the sharpest growth with a 35% rise, while YouTube traffic rose significantly by 32% on post-match mornings.

Allott claims while mobile devices didn’t replace big-screen TV watching during the World Cup, they created a new category, playing “a central role in enhancing the viewer's World Cup experience by offering them additional football and match-related information in real time, and by providing the ability to watch replays at leisure and distribute them virally.”

"The World Cup highlights the integral role that mobile devices and mobile broadband have come to play in our busy lives and how consumers are use them to enhance their lifestyles by accessing information anytime, anywhere," said Rami Hadar, President and CEO of Allot Communications. "This global tournament has demonstrated the continued rise of mobile data usage, in particular web and video traffic."

Back in the living room, the World Cup Final itself was watched by at least 700 million viewers around the globe and naturally set audience records in Spain and Holland.

Spanish TV recorded its highest ever TV audience, with 15.6 million tuning into the final, more than a third of the country’s population and killing every other television that night with an 85.9 percent audience share.

In the Netherlands, non-World Cup television suffered even more, with 8.5 million viewers, more than half the Dutch population, watching the final, a 90.6 percent audience share. The rest were presumably trying to find something less violent to watch, such as Terminator 4 Salvation.

Across the pond, the idea that Americans don’t care about soccer was properly laid to rest, with English-language World Cup viewership up by more than 40 percent over 2006. More than 15.5 million watched the final on ABC. Nearly 15 million had watched the US’ exiting the World Cup at the hands of Ghana two weeks earlier.

In addition, 8.8 million viewers watched the deciding game with Spanish commentary on Univision, bringing the audience for the final to more than 24.3 million in the US. That’s more than the deciding game of the baseball World Series or ice hockey’s Stanley Cup final and was close to the 28 million who watched the final game 7 of the NBA basketball finals.

This is all good news for mobile television developers, the 3D industry and those planning coverage for the 2012 European Football Championship, jointly hosted by Poland and the Ukraine, as well as the 2014 London Olympics.

Latest Press Releases