The 2010 World Cup Prepares to Set Digital Media History
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.
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