• ClickZ, Thursday, June 8, 2006 10:30 AM

The World Cup starts tomorrow, and if you're not excited--or at least a little intrigued--by what is by far the world's most important sports event, then I feel sorry for you. Yes, we diehard soccer fans tend to be a little pushy about our love of the sport. However, if as marketers you're not in some way trying to capitalize on the hugeness of the event or the diehard-ness of its fans, then you're not doing your job. ClickZ talks about the most prominent online players for Germany 2006. Yahoo, one of the global tournament's principal sponsors, is hosting the official FIFA World Cup site. The American version gives users access to news, photo galleries, participating team and World Cup city descriptions as well as video--yes, finally video--highlights of each match after it concludes. World Cup sponsors like adidas and Budweiser get prominent placement on the site. Meanwhile, ESPN, in a bid to attract new users to its ESPN360 broadband video service, is streaming 52 of the 64 games live on its site. It has one dedicated sponsor--also adidas--which gets a "presented by" banner in front of everything on the media player. Yahoo rival MSN, Microsoft's Web portal, is hosting partner Fox Networks' Fox Soccer Channel Web site. The pair have expanded their offerings for the tournament with a series of blogs, with branding from Cingular, Nike, and Hyndai. The New York Times has also launched a World Cup blog, updated several times a day, and featuring live commentary of U.S. team matches.

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