Fans paid to watch football games

Fans will receive £5 each for being filmed in groups

Football fans are being offered the chance to earn money while watching matches at home.

Researchers at Glasgow University want to film 15 people as part of a project to develop new mobile phone technology.

The footage will be analysed to see what fans talk about and how they react during a game.

The aims is to develop mobile phone applications which enable photo-sharing and blogging in real-time, using wi-fi, GPS and 3G technology.

The £400,000 project is being funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council.

It is being carried out by Stuart Reeves, Marek Bell and Matthew Chalmers, of the university's department of computing science, with a colleague from the University of California, San Diego, and collaborators at Microsoft.

Mr Reeves said: "We want to find out what fans talk about and their reactions to events at a game.

"The aim is to design applications that can help them record events during the match, communicate in the gaps between play - before a game, during breaks in the game, at half time, after it has finished - and create a memory of the day.

"Many people like to keep a log of sports events they have been to but this will also be useful for those who cannot attend events, enabling them to interact with friends who are there."

The study will see fans receive £5 each for being filmed in groups as they watch a game, and £10 for an hour-long interview on the role football plays in their lives.

Some will also be given an Apple iPhone on loan as part of a month-long field trial of new software systems.