World Cup Football’s Online/Mobile Coverage Fell Short; TV Still Rules

So says this story from the Guardian, looking at some numbers and expert opinion: A survey by media agency Starcom found that content often fell short of consumers’ high expectations of quality and reliability, and poeple wanted to watch it on TV (but then that wasn’t the point of online and mobile coverage anyway).
Starcom’s research, which involved interviews with 1,000 consumers, found that the novelty of being able to watch matches online or on mobile phones was no longer enough – it had to be fast, reliable and of high quality.
Some numbers, mainly UK focused: UK mobile operator 3 recorded more than 3.6 million viewings of its programming…3′s match highlights channel proved the most popular with 60,000 people – the equivalent of a capacity crowd at Arsenal’s new stadium – tuning in daily.
The BBC website managed 399 million impressions for the duration. The total live streamed games reached 5.72 million across the tournament. And a total of 5.3 million digital satellite users pressed the “red button” to access interactive services.
The Fifa World Cup site, run by Yahoo, clocked up more than 138 million video streams during the competition. Furthermore, 3.5 million users viewed pictures posted by fans on Yahoo!’s photo-sharing site Flickr.