Case Study: TWI Interactive stays one step ahead in the mobile game - February 2004  

The 2003 Rugby World Cup enabled TWI Interactive, the technology division of global sports marketing agency IMG, to showcase some of its mobile sports technology. Sport and Technology spoke to IMG's head of mobile services, Mark Selby, and Simon Denyer, who is TWIi's commercial director for Europe, about the role mobile technology is playing in the company's development.

IMG is in the enviable position of having relationships with multiple parties in the sports marketplace from rights holders through to distributors. "We have also been building relationships over the years with mobile operators," says Selby. "This places us in a unique position to experiment and trial technology. We have established an exceptional ability to design, build, deliver and manage services for operators in multiple languages, time zones and multiple sports. More and more rights holders are recognising the potential value of mobile."
TWIi's clients include European soccer giants Manchester United and Barcelona, golf superstar Tiger Woods, British tennis number one Tim Henman and the NFL's Super Bowl 2004 winners the New England Patriots. But TWIi's presence is strictly at the back end explains Denyer. "We are purely the middle man, we're not trying to create any brand apart from in the B2B sense. As far as the consumer is concerned there is no recognition of us. That's still very much the ethos of the whole group, it's very rare that we actually try to create a brand. We do have some TV programming initiatives where we are trying to create a brand but in the vast majority of cases, we're behind the scenes to make sure the client does the right thing."
For the 2003 Rugby World Cup (RWC), TWIi provided the mobile services for that event including video streaming to operators in multiple markets. "The RWC was an outstanding success for us," says Selby. "We provided SMS services such as news on teams and scores updates so that people could stay in touch the whole time. Those were provided as both push and pull services so you could come in when you wanted to get information, or you could subscribe and get the information sent to you, personalised around the team you were interested in. In addition, fans had the opportunity to check a broader scope of information at any time using WAP."
For the WAP service, full-colour images were made available during games that were constantly updated. TWIi also produced MMS services such as Rugby World Cup Plus, combining audio, text, graphics, photos as well as streaming video features including half-time and full-time highlights of matches, a replay of each match in full 24 hours after it finished, previews, interviews and a World Cup archive, including the top 20 tries from every tournament since 1991 and replays of the three best matches from each tournament.
"Different operators could select which services they wanted within their individual markets based on the capability of their network and the handsets," explains Selby. "For example, in some markets we had Nokia 3650s starting to roll out in volume which enabled the rich media experience."

Engaging in some joined up thinking

The whole event was a constant learning experience for TWIi and the feedback from its partners on consumer uptake extremely encouraging. "While we have been working in the mobile space, there have been a series of projects that we have undertaken where we have been genuinely surprised by consumer behaviour," continues Selby. "In the UK during the RWC there were 15m cars off the road while the final was being played so clearly people were watching on television or listening to the radio. However, the traffic on the WAP site was phenomenal during the game and around the game. It was incredible how many people wanted to get those constant updates. And I can't believe that all those people coming in were not standing in front of TVs. What we saw there and with other sports events in the past is that mobile as a genuine media channel is really coming of age."
TWIi's RWC deals included providing exclusive mobile phone content to Telstra in Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong, O2 in the UK and Exact Mobile in South Africa, including 'near-live' alerts of tries and major incidents and highlights of every game at half time and full time.
Telstra Bigpond in Australia and AOL Broadband in the UK gave free access to the Rugby World Cup Plus service to their customers in a bid to attract new users, after RWC signed upfront deals with them (brokered by TWIi) - six-figures in the case of AOL. The licence fees received from the two broadband operators and the mobile phone companies were split between Rugby World Cup, TWI and RealNetworks which handled the subscription management.
"In terms of revenue models, we've seen every possible variation of commercial relationship over the years at TWIi," says Selby. "As the billing capabilities develop with operators, it is easier to share revenues. There were real challenges in the early days to find a simple business model that enabled sharing though."

The TWIi one-stop shop

TWIi positions itself as a one-stop shop for the interactive experience whether it be mobile or broadband. "We've got people who have worked in the sports industry for a long time," says Denyer. "We can work out strategies and longer term planning, we can also do commercial brokerage planning and also provide technical and production services. We provide all of those elements to many of our clients but for others we only do bits and pieces."
Denyer's role at TWIi is to create commercial value around his client's interactive rights. "In some cases," he says, "the only way to exploit those rights has been to develop our own technology because what we needed wasn't available in the off-the-shelf environment."
TWIi's range of tools cover the production, management, distribution and delivery of content services across multiple channels - including web, mobile/wireless and television. TWIi's Interactive Content Factory (ICF) is a video production and delivery "that allows our team to take exactly the same feeds that our colleagues at TWI take for their television pictures, work on them in a purely digital environment and quickly turn around content onto websites and mobile phones within a couple of minutes," says Denyer.
Not all the challenges for TWIi are high-tech though says Selby. "The interesting thing at the moment is that while many of us take SMS for granted, there is still an incredible amount of people who are still yet to send their first text message. In many countries we are looking at 50% of mobile users still waiting to send their first one or become a regular SMS users."
In an industry that currently seems obsessed by streaming out the richest media possible, Selby's words offer a refreshing opportunity: "The scope for legacy handsets - those without the fancy functions - are tremendous."

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