From the first day of the competition, people in more than 230 countries will be able to download Everypoint’s football mobile application, the Yahoo! Mobile MatchCast, from the World Cup’s official website.

The application, which has been created in cooperation with internet giant Yahoo!, gives football fans access to real-time match information, schedules, scores, and up-to-the-second commentary – all the information people will want about the World Cup sent directly to their mobile phones.

Marc Theermann, chief marketing officer at Everypoint, says: “For the first time, soccer fans will be able to follow the world’s biggest tournament on their mobile phones, and we are very excited to be able to collaborate with Yahoo! to offer this valuable service.”

Theermann says Yahoo!, which is responsible for the mobile and internet experience at the World Cup, chose Everypoint for two reasons. “Our applications are cheaper to operate and they look significantly better than other available applications,” he says.

Everypoint’s content delivery engine makes the Yahoo! Mobile MatchCast cheaper to operate for content providers and carriers, and ultimately cheaper for consumers, Theermann says.

He explains: “The content delivery engine allows us to continuously push updates to the application, which means it’s always up-to-date and users don’t have to hit refresh to get new information. Our technology also ensures that very little data is being transferred to the mobile phone.

“Yahoo didn’t want to charge users for the service and wanted to make sure they didn't end up paying high data traffic fees. With our technology, we ensure data traffic is kept to a minimum.”

Another reason why the Yahoo! Mobile MatchCast stands out from the crowd of other Java applications is the quality of the graphics. “All our applications are powered by proprietary vector graphics engines, which means we are able to deliver content with crisp and vivid images that are unmatched in the mobile market,” Theermann says.

Theermann believes Everypoint’s technology also makes its applications attractive to advertisers. “We feel we can provide an unobtrusive and elegant advertisement service,” he says. “We can offer advertisers a rich graphics user-interface, which contains animation and very crisp graphics. This means that our applications can easily be used to convey brand value and important brand messages. If advertisers want to change their advertisement, or have multiple advertisements in the same application, they have the option of doing this because our technology allows them to continuously update the information.”

Although Yahoo! is keeping its football mobile application free from advertisers, Theermann believes there is a lot of interest, in general, among companies to advertise on the mobile phone. “This year, we will start seeing significant investments in this area and we feel we are well-positioned to participate in the upswing,” he says.

Theermann says his company is perfectly suited to offer sports applications, thanks to its unique technology. “As a small company, you need to focus, and we have focused on sport because the need for real-time data is high and end-users appreciate the graphic interface,” he says.

Everypoint was founded a year ago and is already working with a number of sports companies, including IMG, the world’s largest sports marketing company, and Sport 1, Germany’s largest sports media company.

In August, Everypoint will launch a football application for every league in Europe, which will be included in a larger sports portal, containing photos, news on the different leagues, and much more.

“Sports clubs in Europe are currently providing SMS services, so they are eager to further expand into The mobile arena, and we are able to help them with that,” Theermann says.

When it comes to giving advice to other companies who want to offer similar mobile services, Theermann says that any new service needs to be easy to use and attractive to keep users’ interest. “If we want end users to adopt these next-generation services, we need to provide an experience that mirrors that of the computer; and Java applications, such as ours, are on the way to achieving that.”

Torunn Hansen-Tangen