Nick Cifuentes

Every four years, a spectacle across the world takes place that rivals no other event, the World Cup. And with the event set to kick-off June 10, digital enthusiasts expect it to ignite digital interactions online. During the last World Cup in 2006, social media was not as impactful as it is today. YouTube, then independently owned, garnered just about 100 million video views per month, compared to the more than 6 billion it nabbed in the beginning of 2010. Facebook was a college and high school only network for college students, and Twitter was a star in @bizstone’s eye. As for video streaming, the World Cup did not live stream games on the Internet, so if any, streaming was barely existent except for maybe pirated networks.

Fast-forward four years later, Facebook has more than 450+ million users worldwide, and Twitter broadcasts more than 50 million tweets a day. This year’s World Cup is expected to see unprecedented amount of traffic via social networks and other digital activity, and is should create a landmark moment in our short digital history.

Live Streaming the World Cup

First, let’s start with the live streams. In the US, ESPN/ABC and Univision have all the rights to the broadcast in English and Spanish, and those will also extend to the web, where ESPN3 (formerly ESPN360.com), owned by Disney will be streaming all the matches live. All streams will be carried for free with an ad-supported model involved.

And even though football is not an American-friendly sport (known as soccer in the US), you can expect the streaming audience in the US to be huge. Of the total 32 teams involved in this year’s tournament, 11 have US-based populations of more than 1 million, according the Census Bureau surveys. This is something to surely ignite several major US expatriates that will be looking to power behind their team, whether it’s via television or digital media.

Outside of the US, the potential for streaming video is impressive. A recent study from Universal McCann, shows Internet users in select countries who watch video online from 2006 – 2009, and the numbers are considerably higher in terms of percent viewed. Brazil, China, Spain, South Korea, and Australia all spout impressive online video watching percentages and surely will translate come this year’s World Cup. However, let’s make this one point clear, outside of the US, it is almost always acceptable to stop everything, even work to watch World Cup games on TV; school, work, it all stops for the World Cup.

In Argentina for example, the minister of education grants his country’s schools permission to broadcast World Cup games inside the classroom. His reasoning you ask? He said the games hold a ‘pedagogic’ value, and also said that his students would most likely skip school to watch the games in any manner, so what better than to just allow the students to watch the games in the classroom anyways.

Web Traffic Set to Break Records

The world’s official football website, FIFA.com, has said it expects a record amount of site traffic for the 2010 World Cup, forecasting more than 5.5 billion page views, compared to the 4.2 billion recorded for the 2006 event.

Think that’s impressive, with the World Cup games being aired live on cell phones, live streams, and then following-up with previous day highlights spattered across the web, the 2010 World Cup will be the most widely covered sporting event in history.

Akamai Technologies Inc, which delivers about 20 percent of the world’s internet traffic, has been building their networks up in anticipation for this year’s World Cup, and expects traffic to be two or three times as heavy as what was measured during President Barack Obama’s inauguration – thus far, the high point for traffic volume is about 1 terabit, or 1 trillion bits of data, per second. (H-D and 3D video technologies are also a major factor in boosting volume)

“It could well be another watershed event in terms of people understanding what is now possible to do with video online,” Akamai Chief Scientist Tom Leighton said. “This will draw a lot of people at once and that will cause people to be aware en masse that, hey, you can do some very cool things with video online that you can’t even do with broadcast right now.”

All this being said, for this year’s World Cup, the story won’t be around mobile or online television viewing driving up overall Internet traffic, but more about how people will interact with all forms of World Cup data, be it on a TV, computer or a mobile device. Expect the 2010 World Cup to make fan rivalries be even more intense, it will connect fans of a team who live across the globe from one other to unite and make connections via digital media, ultimately driving this year’s event into the record books.

Record in Social Interactions?

Football is an incredible sport, the passion, the skill, and true unity involved in the game makes it the most popular game, and has the largest following on the planet. Analysts are predicting that this is going to be biggest and most powerful demonstration of digital experiences to happen on the Internet.

One Twitter employee was quoted saying to CNN “that World Cup will eclipse everything we have seen so far on Twitter, including the US election, the Oscars, or the Super Bowl, simply because it is so international,” said Robin Sloan, a Twitter employee that works on media partnerships.

Twitter is set to handle the World Cup, and it will be interesting how it plays out on the platform. There seems to be a few clear hashtags that will reign prominence around the World Cup directly, #worldcup, #wc2010 and #2010worldcup. Also, you will have realize this is a global event, so World Cup is translated in several variations, in Spanish it is “Copa Mundial”, and in French it’s “Coupe du Monde,” and so on.

And there are a mob of Twitter accounts in existence that will involve the 2010 World Cup, among them are @2010OC (2010 FIFA World Cup), @2010fans (Official 2010 FIFA World Cup South African Government website), @FIFAWorldCupTM (Official FIFA World Cup Twitter account), and more than 10 others you can follow here.

The official sponsors of the 2010 World Cup have also taken flight with the festivities and have all launched unique campaigns on major social media channels, including Facebook, YouTube and a variety of other networks with a more international positioning. (Bebo, Orkut, etc…)

Nike dropped a World Cup ad mid-May directed by writer-director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (“Babel,” “Amores Perros,” “21 Grams”) called “Write the Future,” and it features soccer legends Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Landon Donovan and Ronaldinho, with cameos by Kobe Bryant, Roger Federer and Homer Simpson. The video shows how lives change based on the World Cup outcome, and a beautiful twist of moments that helps define what the World Cup means to the individual communities.

The video is the premier piece of the Nike social campaign, dressed inside their World Cup – Nike branded Facebook and YouTube pages and has been positioned as the center focus of their campaign. Their efforts so far have led the video to garnering almost 14 million views in less than a month’s time, and their YouTube channel, which is has become the 4^th most viewed channel overall on YouTube in the month of June.

Adidas’, another 2010 World Cup sponsor, campaign called “The Quest”, is not just out to entertain you, but also make you a better footballer. The campaign is part of an effort to market a new shoe that they claim is the lightest and fastest, and for 50 days leading up until the first World Cup game of 2010, you have a chance to enter the contest on their Facebook Page to win a pair of shoes signed by Lionel Messi, who plays for Argentina and is arguably the best football player in the world. The Facebook Page currently has more than 700K fans (Likes).

Powerade, the official ‘hydrator’ of the World Cup, is running a unique YouTube campaign that focuses on taking the user inside a player’s inner thoughts by having them view 16 short films on their YouTube channel, along with sliding in tips along the way helping you perform at your best. Their campaign focuses on linking football to the need for hydration.

Coca-Cola, the official soft drink of the 2010 World Cup, launched a campaign around the theme “Open Happiness”that focused on the longest celebration, relating it to the over-exuberant goal celebrations that take place in Football when a goal is scored. They struck a deal with YouTube in 120 countries and 17 languages to prompt viewers to post videos of self-created goal celebrations, and award to the user with the best goal dance a chance to go to the 2010 World Cup, all determined by fan voting. They also stepped up promotional efforts for the campaign by not just including TV advertising, but also in-store displays, packaging, music, experiential and digital programs in more than 150 countries around the world.

Pepsi, even though they are not the official soft drink of the 2010 World Cup, launched a viral video ad in March about the 2010 World Cup that has topped the Ad Age list of most circulated viral videos, with several million combined views.

Visa is featuring a mobile application that allows fans to monitor the match schedule, track scores, standings, and even chat with each other and connect to the FIFA store. Other marketing elements include social media, along with TV and out-of-home advertising.

They also are featuring a YouTube campaign that engages users to submit their best “Goallllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll………………………..” call via a video to their YouTube channel and win a chance to head to the 2014 World Cup. Visa also has a link to download the mobile application at the bottom of the YouTube page.

Hyndai, an official partner of the 2010 World Cup games, are reportedly sponsoring a street campaign throughout the country to cheer on the national team. In addition to an extremely loaded promotional effort that includes a full-blown microsite, as well as a Facebook, YouTube and Orkut page, and they are also running TV commercials, stadium perimeter boards, a “fan fest”, a “Fan of the Match” promotion, an augmented reality print-out promotion, a “Hyundai Best Young Player Award”. In addition to other online promotions, they will have official country-buses in the stadium area and many other integrated elements throughout the games.

In the end, as the 2010 FIFA World Cup kicks off in just a matter of hours, it’s important to recognize that this month long event will truly make digital history. When analyzing our behaviors online and how often we pick up our phones and log into our social networks, or go to watch a video, or take time to chat with friends and those ‘kind of friends’ on various channels – these digital interactions are not only changing the way we communicate, but defining how our culture interacts. And now, with a chance to test the interactive waters with the largest, most mass-culturally embraced event on the planet – we will soon see how it affects our everyday habits.