ESPN is featuring mobile as a central channel in its efforts to connect with soccer fans leading up to and during the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

As part of the ramp up in soccer coverage, ESPN Mobile has launched a free ESPN World Cup application for the iPhone and iPod touch available in the App Store. The application features live draw results updated in real-time and includes breaking news and analysis of the World Cup, which will take place in June.

?This app is the start of a much bigger campaign we?re going to have on mobile related to the World Cup,? said Oke Okaro, New York-based vice president of mobile at ESPN. ?The app itself was launched to coincide with the draw, which represented the start of the World Cup campaign for us.

?The World Cup is a very big priority for ESPN, and we see mobile as being a very big component of that coverage,? he said. ?Generally speaking, games will be played during hours when people are not sitting in front of a TV, so mobile is a way for people to connect to the teams they care about most wherever they may be.?

The International Federation of Association Football, commonly known by its French acronym, FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), is the international governing body of association football, that is, international soccer.

Headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland, FIFA is responsible for the organization and governance of soccer's major international tournaments, most notably the FIFA World Cup, held every four years since 1930.

App for soccer fanatics
ESPN is making the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa a priority leading up to the world?s most important, prestigious international soccer tournament in June.

Future updates to the application will include alerts, community features, live scores, GameCast and video content.

?From a mobile perspective, what we?re looking at is a much more comprehensive campaign that includes a mobile Web site and games we?re going to make available on mobile,? Mr. Okaro said. ?This is a substantial mobile campaign that is led with the iPhone application.?

Fans with access to the ESPNsoccernet mobile Web site can also find Draw coverage, breaking news, team summaries and player profiles.

ESPN World Cup features that are available on mobile include expert profiles of all 32 teams, key players and groups, a live countdown to the 2010 World Cup kickoff on June 11 and a full schedule of matches with venue information and World Cup history.

ESPN enables mobile fantasy bracket management for the ESPN World Cup Bracket Predictor game, as well as personalization features with social media tools to submit fan comments.

While ESPN?s bread and butter continues to be North America, the sports publishing giant is casting an international net with its mobile World Cup initiatives.

?This is a broader audience than we typically reach here in the U.S., because of international fans? avidity for the sport,? Mr. Okaro said. ?There are tie-ins with other channels, so it?s a very personal experience, and we?re reaching a very broad and diverse audience.?

While Mr. Okaro hinted that ESPN might release applications for other smartphone platforms, for now ESPN is focusing on the iPhone application and the mobile Web site.

?We?re not yet ready to announce what we might do from an app standpoint,? Mr. Okaro said. ?The mobile Web is the platform with a mass audience, and our mobile Web site has different flavors.

?If you access the site from a touchscreen device, you get an optimized version, a great, slick experience,? he said. ?We?re not ready to announce apps for other platforms.?

ESPN partners with mobile ad networks and sells its own advertising inventory across its portfolio of mobile Web site and applications. The World Cup application and mobile site add to that inventory.

?Mobile is one component of larger World Cup sponsorship packages that our sales people are selling,? Mr. Okaro said. ?Mobile is sold across different properties such as Monday Night Football, College Game Day and Baseball Tonight, and this is an extension of those programs we have in the marketplace.

?The World Cup app and mobile site are included in the World Cup package for advertisers that we have in the marketplace,? he said.

To get the word out about its World Cup mobile properties, ESPN is going to leverage its general mobile Web site, which sees a tremendous amount of traffic.

ESPN is also integrating promotions for the application and mobile Web site into a multichannel World Cup advertising campaign that includes print, television and placement on the PC version of ESPN.com.

The iPhone application is currently free, but ESPN?s plan is to continue to update the applicaiton with new functions and capabilities and eventually take advantage of in-application purchase capabilities to sell premium features via iTunes.

?We?re really excited, because during the World Cup mobile is going to play a critical role in keeping fans connected throughout the course of the day,? Mr. Okaro said. ?We?re excited to be a great partner for FIFA and to raise the profile and awareness of soccer here in the U.S.?