Company news
12/07/2006
They think it’s all over… It is now - but how big a role did technology play in this year’s tournament?
They think it’s all over… It is now - but how big a role did technology play in this year’s tournament?- Only 2.8% of respondents admitted to ‘pulling a sickie’ in order to watch the World Cup
- Almost 70% resorted to watching the tournament at work rather than with friends and family
- 10% used video streaming applications to keep up with the action
12 July, 2006, London. The UK’s workforce is an honest, hardworking bunch (only 2.8% admitted to ‘pulling a sickie’ in order to watch this year’s World Cup games!) but they are also embracing new technologies to keep up with significant sporting or other events according to research released today by leading multimedia hosting and data centre services provider, TelecityRedbus. Following the introduction of mass video streaming and the raft of technologies competing to help supporters keep up with the World Cup action while in the office, the research aimed to discover whether the range and variety of technologies available made any real impact on supporters’ experiences this year.
The results suggest that, with the technology infrastructure now available to support mass online content distribution, consumers are beginning to embrace new multimedia services and applications. 10% of respondents claimed to have taken advantage of the live video streaming offered this year while 61.3% said that they checked for updates online or on their mobile.
Mike Tobin, CEO of TelecityRedbus, comments:
“This trend suggests that new consumer technologies will be adopted if the content and format is right. Most consumer technology is introduced as a result of a specific market pull and this research supports the suggestion that consumers are beginning to use a variety of services as quickly as providers are able to develop them. Just as 1966 marked the onset of colour TV technology, perhaps the 2006 tournament will be remembered as the year that streaming media began to elicit mass-market appeal.”
The vast majority of those questioned highlighted that their preferred method of keeping up to speed with the action was traditional, with 73.5% preferring to watch the games live surrounded by friends and family in the pub or at home. Despite this, over 68% of supporters resigned themselves to watching their team at work, while almost half (45%) said that they had spent approximately 30 minutes per day keeping up with the action online.
Tobin concludes:
“Now that media content providers such as the BBC - together with TelecityRedbus - have developed the resilient infrastructures needed to support media-rich streaming services it is only a matter of time before the services are adopted by even wider audiences. These results show that the introduction of these new content delivery methods has attracted a significant number of users already and will almost certainly be a mass-market technology by the time 2010 comes around.”
