Published:
17-Jul-08
Largest US mobile operator with over 72m subscribers, AT&T, has signed a deal with NBC in order to provide 24/7 coverage of the Beijing 2008 Olympics Games on mobile handsets. Live competition footage will be broadcast on the NBC Olympics 2Go mobile TV channel which will be added to the AT&T mobile TV service 8 August 2008. The service is currently delivered over Qualcomm's MediaFLO-based broadcast mobile TV platform along with Verizon's VCAST Mobile TV service. The Olympics channel will be exclusive to AT&T consumers along with Sony Pictures' mobile movie channel Pix.
This deal is part of a larger agreement between AT&T and NBC Universal which also includes access to NBC's Olympics footage on its IPTV service U-verse and to its high speed internet customers on NBCOlympics.com. A similar deal has been agreed between NBC Universal and Verizon for its FiOS TV subscribers.
Our take...
Sports is the most popular content type on mobile along with News and Weather. In 2006, Italy took advantage of the Football World Cup to launch mobile broadcast TV based on DVB-H technology and has been the leading mobile TV market in Europe since then with just over 1m subscribers. NBC Universal has signed cross-platform distribution deals with both AT&T and Verizon. However, the exclusivity obtained by AT&T on the mobile TV front gives the operator the competitive edge. Being a sponsor and the official telecommunications services partner of the US Olympic Team most probably aided AT&T in obtaining the exclusivity. It is also good news for MediaFLO USA which has been trying to make the mobile TV platform more appealing through several sports content deals with ESPN, NBC and CBS over the past six months.
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