NEW YORK ? The 2010 FIFA World Cup was a watershed moment for mobile as barriers and records of all sorts were broken, according to an ESPN executive.

ESPN provided an in-depth look at how the World Cup has changed the mobile landscape for live events to come during a session at the Interactive Advertising Bureau?s Marketplace: Mobile conference. Fan behavior is blurring the lines between online and mobile more than ever, according to the sports media giant.

?For the first time in January 2008, at certain times on NFL Sundays we saw more traffic to our mobile site than to ESPN.com, which was a huge success for us and for the entire mobile industry,? said Brian Colbert, senior director of mobile ad sales at ESPN, Bristol, CT. ?I think the World Cup changed mobile entirely.

?It completely changed the game, reset the landscape and changed the way fans consume mobile content,? he said. ?It reset all of our expectations about what?s possible.

?It was a watershed moment.?

There were 32 teams that played 64 matches, but none were during primetime in the United States, which would have been a much bigger challenge for ESPN, but with its mobile channels, it was a fully immersive multimedia experience.

?Fans don?t care how they get their content as long as they get it,? Mr. Colbert said. ?We didn?t really understand what it meant for us until the World Cup.

?What did we learn?? he said. ?Mobile is personal, mobile is digital, mobile is video and mobile is social.

?This is our mobile strategy moving forward?the World Cup shaped how we?re going to look at product strategy.?

ESPN claims 110,000 persons per minute on average used ESPN Digital Media platforms, including mobile, which was greater than the average minute audience of 23 cable networks during the same time period.

Mr. Colbert said that applications provided a more personalized, customizable fan experience.

ESPN achieved 2.5 million downloads of the World Cup application?1.5 million in June alone?and 800,000 downloads of the ScoreCenter application in June, which is about to cross 7 million downloads overall.

Mr. Colbert said that 16 million alerts were sent via SMS and through the World Cup application. The average opted-in fan received 242 alerts during the event.

How does this affect ESPN?s strategy?

Mr. Colbert said the company will focus on local applications, the ScoreCenter XL iPad application, a video-centric customizable My SportsCenter iPad application to be released in the Fall.

In addition, ESPN is working hard on an ESPN the Magazine application for iPad, although that release date is a little further out.

To complement its iPhone and iPad inventory, ESPN will also place more of a focus on BlackBerry and Android.

ESPN Mobile generated 98 million visits to World Cup content during the tournament, including mobile Web, ScoreCenter and the World Cup application, compared to 128 million to the PC version of ESPN.com.

Mobile out-delivered ESPN.com in visits and page views on six days during the tournament,? Mr. Colbert said. ?Weekends are primetime for mobile.?

The time spent per mobile visit was 11 minutes, and 36 percent of mobile traffic was unduplicated unique visitors.

?Mobile is part of every digital sales package?it has to be,? Mr. Colbert said.

ESPN mobile TV reached 1 million unique viewers who consumed 93 million minutes of live World Cup games.

Both MobiTV and MediaFlo reported that ESPN World Cup coverage set mobile TV viewership records.
The average time spent per viewer per game was 20 minutes.

Mr. Colbert said that 6.2 million World Cup highlight clips were consumed via ESPN?s mobile Web site.

?Video is a priority across all of our mobile products, which features dynamic ad serving,? Mr. Colbert said. ?We?re also looking at premium video alerts via SMS or MMS and within apps.?

Agency perspective
So that the session was not so publisher-centric, Kim Luegers, director of media innovations at Draftfcb Chicago, offered an agency perspective on the World Cup.

Ms. Luegers offered a list of 10 things her agency believes about mobile:

1. Connective tissue

2. Three pillars?bite-sized, relevant, disposable

3. People are more mobile than brands

4. It is not optional

5. Remote control for life

6. Digital Swiss Army knife

7. Make it useful or do not try

8. Time killers and time savers

9. The Tulsa Test?support as many mobile platforms as possible

10. If you make consumers? mobile lives fit into your brand, they will notice

?We look at the audience first and what types of devices are most prevalent,? Ms. Luegers said. ?It depends on the client and the customers they are looking to talk to.?

Final Take

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