World Cup unlikely to blow mobile content market wide open
Not going to happen this time around
Industry leaders speaking on a panel at the FT's Mobile Conference 2006, said that the football World Cup being held in Germany this year would not be the spur for mass adoption of mobile TV some had been predicting.
Citing the lack of widespread rights deals (T-Mobile has an exclusive deal), shortage of handsets in the market, "compelling" content packages and a true business case for operators, speakers from the Mobile Entertainment Forum, Real Nertworks and the GSM Association agreed that this year was too early for the mass adoption of mobile TV or other World Cup related mobile content. Nor did they think T-Mobile's deal was likely to result in users switching provider so they could access the content.
Bill Gajda, GSM Association cmo, said he thought the Olympics in 2008 or even the next world cup in 2010 were likelier targets for delivering "compelling" content to mobiles.
Rob Glaser, ceo of Real Networks, said that the recent Winter Olympics in Turin had shown that broadcasters can't ignore other content distribution methods. Although the IOC had been very tight on rights, there was significant web activity just to find results. That shows that people will try and find a way to bypass official deals, he said.
Gadja added that he thought there might be some interesting "user generated content" coming from the games, given the photo and video capabilities of the devices.
Which does raise the question, of course, of how operators are going to keep control of events for which they have bought rights when people can capture and share events live.
Which leads Mobile Europe to a thought. Perhaps we'll be seeing mobile phones being banned from major sports and music events on the grounds of "security" in the not too distant future.
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