Football fans are incredibly fickle. One minute they are confident that their team can beat anyone in the world, and with the drop of a hat, a slight change in the wind direction, the situation can change dramatically and the dream shattered. Or, as is the case currently gripping the UK, one man's injury has transformed the whole outcome of the upcoming World Cup Finals in Germany.

News that football-wonderkid-cum-bulldog Wayne Rooney had fractured several bones in his right foot has gripped the nation. Broken metatarsals have become a common injury in English football. David Beckham made the injury infamous in the run-up to the Japan and South Korean World Cup four years ago. Nevertheless, news of Rooney's injury, as did Beckham's four years previous, has rocked the fickle fans' belief in England's chances of lifting the Jules Rimet trophy on July 9th.

By the same token, mobile consumers are equally fickle: if they venture beyond the realms of familiarity (voice and text) and their experience is a poor one, they are unlikely to return - and with good reason - for a considerable period. But an enjoyable and pleasurable experience will not only encourage their return but prompt them to tell their friends too.

Today, The Beautiful Game - as football has become - is the world's favourite sport, with the World Cup the most watched sports event around the world. So it's not surprising that the mobile industry has turned its immediate attention to the footballing feast on offer this summer. But the success of any initiative will hinge on providing content capable of capturing the action, goals, news, mood, emotion and atmosphere on the mobile phone.

The question is whether the World Cup has arrived too soon. There is a newfound industry optimism founded on networks, handsets, applications and content slotting into place in time for mobile to showcase its wares this summer. As ever, this optimism is offset somewhat by a hint of skepticism with two questions looming large on the horizon: will the technology (and handsets) work, and are the consumers not only ready to embrace the next generation of services, but most importantly, willing to pay for them.

If a recent report from the Wireless World Forum is to be believed, then consumers are willing to pay for content. It claims that this year's World Cup will be worth a staggering US$8.5 billion to the mobile industry, of which some US$7.3 billion will be generated by SMS.

From a revenue perspective, text is a safe bet. Football's governing body FIFA - along with the majority of operators - says it will be offering text-based services: In FIFA's case, Matchcast, a minute-by-minute commentary of matches as they unfold supported by images, and an SMS alert service offering news and goal alerts of a user's national team.

Furthermore, the success of SMS has long attracted and been adopted by the major brands, and this summer's tournament is no different. Coke Cola, McDonald's and Carlsberg to name a few are already promoting text-to-win competitions in association with the World Cup.

Text is no bad thing. But the World Cup is an opportunity for the dethroned content to become King once again, providing the innovation and creativity to trigger the imagination of the consumer - enough for them to spend US$1.2 billion based on the Wireless World Forum's claims. According to Informa Telecoms & Media, the mobile entertainment industry will be worth US$21.3 billion in 2006. And with 5.6% of the 2006 global mobile entertainment revenues potentially up for grabs in just four weeks, there is little wonder why companies are jumping on the football bandwagon.

Demand for mobile content during the tournament could be the catalyst to transform Mobile B.C. (Before Content) to Mobile A.D (After Discontent). But get it wrong, and the consumer continues to be discontent with content until the next major opportunity, which will not present itself until the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Has the World Cup come too soon for mobile content? With saturation of the tournament in traditional media, a poor user experience will have the fickle consumer switching off their mobiles in favour of TV and radio. The industry has one shot at getting this right. A penalty shoot out could yet decide the fate of the winners of the tournament, but an own goal by the industry could have a devastating impact on revenues.

So there is heightened pressure on the mobile community to deliver. There will of course be the inevitable flurry of football images, football anthems available in the various mobile-music formats and football games. But there is also the opportunity to promote the next generation of services. And the service that sets the imagination racing and indeed has the "WOW" factor, is mobile TV.

The importance of mobile TV to the mobile media industry cannot be underestimated. In the U.S. Verizon Wireless has placed increasing importance on the launch of its mobile broadcast TV service - using Qualcomm's MediaFLO technology - as the trigger for the take-up of mobile content. In Europe, Vodafone is one of many Tier 1 operators to have also identified TV - along with music and games as the three pillars of mobile entertainment - as the key mobile services.

In November Vodafone joined forces with BSkyB to launch Sky Mobile in the UK. The companies will not reveal actual subscriber figures of the service, but have confirmed that over 100,000 3G subscribers have adopted the mobile TV service since its advent in November - approximately 2% of the UK's total 3G subscriber base of 5 million. Between Sky Mobile's launch on Vodafone and end-January, there were over 70,000 streams a day. In that period, the highest peak-hour rating was for the World Cup draw staged on a Friday night when the target audience was at the pub - demonstrating the appeal of football-based services over mobile.

MobiTV, whose customers include U.S. cellcos Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless, and the likes of Orange in Europe, announced in March that had surpassed 1 million subscribers, and claimed this month that the average MobiTV customer generates $40 more revenue per month than the standard mobile consumer.

The company says that mobile TV growth is faster than ever. What's more, not only does the company says that 80% of consumers upgrading their handsets are taking data services including mobile TV, it says mobile TV is driving mass adoption and enabling the consumers to discover additional content on their handset.

With the growth of mobile TV in mind, the allure of the World Cup has seen operators clamoring for rights to the event in Europe's key markets. Not surprisingly, there is a hive of activity taking place in Germany. Incumbent telco Deutsche Telekom's role as one of the main sponsors for the tournament, has granted T-Mobile the rights to stream 20 live matches to its 3G customers in Germany. And by teaming up with pay-TV provider Premiere, the operator will offer post-match highlights of all 64 games. While T-Mobile will be able to demonstrate 3G streaming, Germany's Mobiles Fernsehen Deutschland GmbH will use the World Cup to launch mobile TV using broadcast technology DMB to all 12 venues for the event.

In France, cellco SFR has the rights to offer four minutes of video material of every match for near-live match highlights, as well as post-match coverage.

In Italy 3 has acquired DVB-H rights for the World Cup, and plans to launch its Walk TV platform at the start of June following the availability of the world's first commercial UMTS/DVB-H handset from South Korean manufacturer LG. In the UK 3's sister company has licensed non-exclusive mobile broadcast rights in the UK and Ireland for all 64 matches. The self-proclaimed mobile media company will launch three dedicated mobile TV channels: extended match highlights, 'Today's Best of.' content and a specially commissioned daily magazine show, which the operator claims is the first made-for-mobile programming of its sort.

Even news channels are getting in on the act. UK news channel ITN revealed to Informa Telecoms & Media that it will expand its made-for-mobile content offering with a dedicated news channel covering the World Cup. The service will run for six weeks and underlines ITN's commitment to producing mobile content.

Ultimately, the positioning of mobile TV during the World Cup in context with other media, either as complementary or substitutive, will play a significant part in determining how the service is accepted by the consumer. Mobile TV trials have already revealed that there is a correlation between screen size and the length of the viewing session: a 42-inch plasma screen will always win hands down over a two-inch mobile device. But if that mobile device provides a service above and beyond traditional media, primarily based on the user's location and utilizing mobility or additional content only available on mobile, then consumers will pay a premium.

Given that sport is seasonal, it is highly unlikely that consumers will leave Orange, for example, in favour of T-Mobile and its World Cup offering lasting only one month. But the World Cup does provide operators and content providers with the opportunity to experiment with consumer usage behaviour and pricing acceptance, perhaps not quite generating the revenues expected by the Wireless World Forum. This is just the beginning.

3G streaming offers the safest bet for viewing World Cup action over mobile versus mobile broadcasting, considering the early development of DMB and DVB-H technology and handsets. Mobile TV is in its infancy and needs to go through a technological evolution. And it needs to avoid any broken bones in the process.

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