Okay, so it's almost over--the World Cup, that is.

The Cup has been astoundingly popular in the U.S. Have you noticed how many bars in New York and elsewhere advertised Cup gatherings on sidewalk chalkboards? Too, fans host parties at home and at work, and PCs have been tuned to all kinds of coverage--live streams of the games, news reports, and blog coverage.

Meanwhile, as the Cup winds down, Hitwise reports that the Yahoo FIFA World Cup Web site received more visits than the official site for major league baseball! Yes, that's right, the FIFA World Cup site on Yahoo was the fifth most visited Web site in the Sports category for the week ending June 24, 2006, accounting for 4.1 percent of U.S. category visits.

For that week, Hitwise reports that the Yahoo FIFA World Cup site ranked No. 68 overall among the more than 500,000 U.S. sites it tracks. In fact, visits to the site surpassed the MLB site, Yahoo! Sports MLB, on June 22, the day of the U.S.-Ghana match that dashed the U.S. team's hopes of advancing in the tournament.

Some additional highlights from Hitwise:

Midtown Mix, the middle-income urban PRIZMNE social group, comprised 7.4 percent of visitors to FIFA World Cup, but accounted for only 5.4 percent of total Internet users.

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