The mobile World Cup

Thomas Husson | June 09, 2006, 09:46 AM

Not a day without a PR on how the World Cup will drive data revenues for mobile operators. I have seen announcements of several billion $ ! That's all very well but I am unsure on how relevant such data is. Yes, it is an opportunity to sell an increasing number of logos (your team or your favorite player) and ringtones, drive use towards wap decks and portals and promote mobile video. But let's be honest: it is mainly a sponsoring and branding issue.

Even SFR (the French mobile operator owns the mobile rights on an exclusive basis) is not entitled to broadcast the content but simply to give access to near real time short video content. The service is interesting and well promoted (funny TV commercial): you receive an SMS alert with a WAP push to view the video a few minutes after a goal has been scored. Interstingly, when you read the *, it is written in small caps that the content cannot be viewed simultaneously by more than 210,000 consumers. From my estimation, their video-enabled phone base is slightly above 2M. There is obviously a cost per MB issue and some technology limitations on their 3G networks. I doubt however that more than 10% of their consumers will watch it at the same time. They will probably watch the game in front of a large-and-traditional-screen-once-called-TV.

This is however part of larger offer and they will try to capitalize on the event to generate stickiness to the brand and drive traffic to shops, in order to migrate clients to 3G. Oh, I forgot, by the way, SFR is among the first carrier to have launched HSDPA for consumers, but it went largely unnoticed with all the buzz around the World Cup. However, it is true to entry level point is still high (299 euros for a Samsung HSDPA phone). SFR's management found the right way to generate a huge buzz around their World Cup offerings: the French team manager, Raymond Domenech, gave an exclusive interview on the Vodafone-live portal and not on a print newspaper, a radio or a TV...No doubt it was the best way to have many journalists writing articles with appealing titles: is mobile a new media ?