• ClickZ, Monday, December 12, 2005 10 AM

Next year's world soccer tournament, the FIFA World Cup, is a huge advertising event, causing both Yahoo! and MSN to launch content and advertising opportunities in the six-month run-up to the world's biggest sporting event. For the second time, Yahoo! will be chief sponsor and host of the tournament's official Web site. Yahoo! is also one of 15 official worldwide partners for FIFA, which is soccer's Swiss-based world governing body. Others are adidas, Anheuser-Busch, Avaya, Coca-Cola, Continental Airlines, Deutsche Telekom, Emirates Airline, Fujifilm, Gillette, Hyundai, MasterCard, McDonald's, Philips, and Toshiba. The online media giant has done the honors for four years, including the run-up to the last World Cup held in 2002 in Korea and Japan. Meanwhile, MSN has enlisted several international soccer stars to post weekly blog entries and video Webcasts about their country's progress up until and throughout the tournament. MSN is also adding World-Cup-related content to MSN Messenger, including tournament info and games. Next year's tournament will be hosted in Germany and begins on June 9.

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