• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, February 1, 2012

I haven’t quite figured out how I will manage my living room ottoman this weekend. As a longtime monitor of mobile marketing in and around Super Bowls, I already know this Sunday is going to be a challenge.

What with audio signature app Shazam boasting that a third of the game’s TV spots will have mobile enhancements through its system, a Chevy iOS second-screen experience, and trying to catch the mobile call-outs that may come in programming and ads, I expect to juggle a small riot of competing devices as I try to keep up. The family is already on alert. This is not your normal Super Bowl viewing. No party, no snacks, and no talking. Yeah -- ‘fun’ is my middle name.

Along with the countless notices, previews and calculated leaks of TV spots this week, Verizon is finally trying to leverage its exclusive mobile streaming of the game itself. Available as part of its partnership with the NFL and the NFL Mobile app, Super Bowl XLVI will be streamed for the first time to mobile phones -- or at least the handsets that can carry it.

Now the carrier is trying to sweeten the deal by offering a Smartphone App Pack that includes the streaming and three other apps from the Verizon app library. The $12.99 package includes NFL Mobile Premium, Verizon Video (on-demand episodes from 250 TV shows), VZ Navigator and Visual Voicemail. You also get a subscription of ringback tones -- that last stand for carriers looking to tie their users into layers of subscription.

There is something a bit quaint about Verizon offering an App Pack. How far have we come in just five years? At the edge of being almost wholly disintermediated from the content ecosystem by smartphone operating systems by Google and Apple and the app economy, the carriers try to carve out that ever-shrinking walled garden for themselves where they maintain control. Remember the halcyon days of prehistoric apps that downloaded to your feature phone and rang up $3 and $4 monthly incremental charges to your bill? The entire model rested on people’s forgetfulness.  

As for streaming the Super Bowl over mobile, I will be curious if we get some stats out of this. I am sure there will be people who won’t have access to a TV screen during the game and will resort to a mobile feed. But how many are there when you are talking about one of the last great truly mass media events left?

The biggest media event of the year with over 100 million mobile-enabled viewers in their living room watching, and all we get from the official NFL partner is an app pack?