A study conducted by Juniper Research revealed that mobile sports information and entertainment services will take an increasing share of the global mobile sports, leisure and information content market over the next five years.

Juniper Research estimates that the global market for mobile sports content and services will grow from $1 billion in 2006 to $3.8 billion in 2011 at an average annual growth rate of 27%. This is out of a total sports, leisure and information content market worth just under $4.2 billion in 2006 and growing to $9.5 billion in 2011. Over the whole period of 2006 to 2011, mobile sport, leisure and information content and services is expected to generate a cumulative revenue stream of over $42 billion. 40% of this is expected to come from the European market, 33% from Asia Pacific and 18% from the fast growing North American market.

The key market drivers will be the increasing availability of 3G services and support for high quality video, the globalization of sport personalities and club support, and the improvement of digital sports rights for mobile distribution.

"These drivers apply to many types of leisure and information content, but none more so than sports content. There is a great opportunity for content owners, application service providers and operators to exploit sport content over the mobile channel in innovative ways, now that the technology barriers are diminishing," said Bruce Gibson, Research Director at Juniper Research. "This will only happen if everyone in the value chain pays attention to detail. End user experience in some markets of mobile sports content services built around the 2006 FIFA World Cup, has not been consistently good. Many new users of sports services have been disappointed with the quality of the deliverable and may never buy again. First impressions count for a lot and particularly with time sensitive content like goal alerts and replays, the first experience has to be good to generate repeat business."

Sports, Leisure and Information is a vast area comprising many different types of content and mobile service, from celebrity wallpapers, mobile comics and video to financial information services, child tracking and personal navigation services.