BBC World Cup 2014 – Player cam on your tablet, download highlights and more

The BBC looks to have ambitious plans for its coverage of this year’s FIFA 2014 World Cup in Brazil, plans that for the first time spread across TV, PC/laptop, tablet and smartphone platforms. With over 160 hours of coverage this year from the BBC, a rise of 50% from South Africa in 2010, there’s plenty to watch and lots of ways in which to do it.

Games run from late afternoon until late into the night, and so the BBC has declared this the first ‘24/7 World Cup for all audiences, on all platforms. But what does that mean in reality?

Phone or tablet, iOS or Android (or PC), the experience is essentially identical

Second Screen is looking to be huge at this World Cup. Get more from live games by using your smartphone or tablet to bring you extra details while you watch. The BBC will be offering World Cup Live pages to accompany the matches it’s covering, which are packed with content.

These will include quickly updated video highlights, so you can rewatch that goal or red card over-and-over to your heart’s desire within a couple of minutes of the event occurring live. There will also be at least one player cam option for each team, so you can keep an eye on the off-the-ball movement of a key player on your second screen. You’ll also be able to comment on the game, participate in public votes, see up-to-date OPTA stats, and access the live stream of games, and/or the Five Live commentary for that game.

Having a player-cam running on your tablet is our favourite new feature amongst the ‘second-screen’ options

A highlight for many will be … the highlights. Every morning you’ll be able to download a bite-sized 15min highlight programme to your smartphone or tablet and catch-up with all the action from the previous day while on your commute, or taking a mid-morning break. You can relive the glory or simply catch-up without having to stream the content to your phone, with all the various charges that entails, just download it over broadband while you’re getting up. Again this is available through the BBC Sport app and iPlayer.

Score alerts, launched recently for domestic games, will as we predicted be extended to international sides for the World Cup. So you can get keep abreast of all the score, wherever you happen to be.

As usual there will be all the usual coverage you’d expect from the BBC, Thierry Henry and Rio Ferdinand are the big-name additions to the usual team of Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer and Alan Hansen, along side many more quality pundits, with a total of 998 international caps of experience.

It’s all adds up to a better way to watch the tournament than ever before. Let’s just hope that the football lives up to the technology.