‘FIFA’

From the moment it was announced that South Africa would be hosting the 2010 FIFA World Cup the world has been completely abuzz, especially as this was set to be the first time this prestigious sports event was going to take place on African soil. There was another factor that was sure to set this world cup apart from its predecessors though. While the 2006 FIFA World Cup was relegated more towards television media coverage, the 2010 world cup definitely enjoyed a dramatic change as millions of fans turned to the World Wide Web for their full spectrum of world cup news.

As expected Google was at the forefront of keeping a watchful eye on the global search trends as the world cup was nearing. Up to now the results proved to be quite surprising with Botswana, Bangladesh, South Africa, Fiji and Nepal leading the way as the countries doing the most searches over the last 12 months for key phrases such as “FIFA world cup schedule”, “2010 world cup” and other related queries. As far as stars go the one that soon stood out the most was in fact the vuvuzela. Yes, this ubiquitous – and controversial – horn blew its way to the top of the searches, nearly overtaking the official song of the 2010 World Cup, Waka Waka by Shakira.

Apart from the vuvuzela there have been a number of controversies cropping up throughout the world cup which of course sparked a rise in searches. On the 18th of June, for example, the search volume for “world cup referees” surged after a Slovenian goal was disallowed by a controversial offside call during their game against the USA, one that hugely affected their fate within the tournament. As far as participating teams and individual players go the French was sure to make things interesting both online and off. Searches for “Thierry Henry handball” increased as well as “refusal to train” and “anelka” when the French player Nicolas Anelka had to go back home after he insulted the team’s coach.

While the world cup has been providing us with much entertainment, it also attracted cybercriminals, as usual, with their profiteering schemes to pull a fast one on unsuspected fans. In January 2009 these online criminals had their first run with a tried-and-tested technique in which a 2010 FIFA spam led recipients to believe that they had won an online sweepstakes draw. This was soon followed by two separate spam runs leveraging the upcoming world cup. While the one spam sample came with a .DOC file attachment, the second included a .PDF file attachment. The purpose of both these spam emails were to get recipients to open these attachments which would promise great winnings at the price of divulging personally identifiable information (PII).

Social networking sites on the other hand have been pulling out all the stops to reach fans in all four corners of the world with Twitter launching a whole new website solely for the FIFA World Cup and Facebook creating a new page called “Goal Leaderboard”. With the latter the purpose isn’t so much to track the actual goals scored throughout the tournament but to rather keep tabs on the popularity of the participating teams according to Facebook users.

Lastly but most importantly there is the official FIFA website. On this all-encompassing website fans are able to get all kinds of facts, figures and information, from your favourite player’s birthday to photos of yesteryear’s tournaments. As this sports event also draws the biggest crowds FIFA was able to help direct spectators to book their international- and domestic flights, find accommodation in all major cities in South Africa, rent a car, and of course how to buy tickets for the games.

When the tournament officially kicked off on the 11th of June, 2010, every fan around the world was glued to the screen. The celebrations began… and so did the anticipation as to how well your favourite team was going to perform. To ensure that people always stayed up to date FIFA.com teamed up with Google. Even if you do a simple search for the term “World Cup” you will be provided with the latest scores as well as the dates and time of upcoming matches at the top of the search results page. There are also a number of gadgets made available by Google like their Chrome extension where you can get a live feed of tournament’s results. With all this said and done though one can only wonder what is in store for the 2014 FIFA World Cup which will be hosted in Brazil. As the 20th World Cup it will be sure to be an even bigger celebration than before, and with it one can only imagine that it will be bring along a whole new bundle of online features to keep us on the edge of our seat as our teams set foot on the field. We simply can’t wait!