GOOOAAALLL

*[I need to go ahead and put out a disclaimer before you continue to read through this blog: I love soccer, and as a result my entries will show a heavy bias towards it being the best sport in the world (which it is, obviously, but I digress)]

Soccer has always been considered the beautiful game. The way the players seem to float across the field with such finesse and grace, all while eluding the opposing defenders and maintaining complete ball control, is a true pleasure to witness it. You can see the passion and love for the game oozing from each player to such a high degree, that other sports can’t quite mimic. In America though, soccer has garnered such descriptions as “boring”, “slow”, and the inevitable “way too low scoring to even attempt to keep my attention”. With these kinds of descriptions in tow, it is no wonder that this sport has been pushed to the back burner in favor of high scoring sports like basketball, high action sports like football, and of course, America’s pastime, baseball.

To a true soccer fan though, soccer is not merely a “game”, it’s a way of life. Fans seem to mimic disciples in the way they follow their team. But if you want to witness true passion for, not only this sport, but for one’s own country in overdrive…look no further than the World Cup. The World Cup is one of the few sporting events that claims to be, and is actually, a global phenomenon (*cough* Baseball’s World Series *cough*). Rooting for your country unties a country like very few things can, and this past year’s World Cup is no exception to that.

Going into the World Cup, the United States was already considered the underdog. The entire world knows that we don’t put a priority on soccer, so when we were paired up to play England in the very first round of the Cup the general consensus was that we would be sent home from South Africa with at least a 3-0 lost under our belt. But at the end of the first game, America, England, and the rest of the world for that matter, were shocked that we were able to hold England to draw. This was the spark that Americans needed to become full-fledged soccer fanatics.

You could feel the mood change overnight after that game. Soccer fever had hit America. Americans immediately wanted to stay up to date with all of the games. Who was winning? Who was scoring? Who got a red card? HOW IS AMERICA DOING?! The answer to these questions came in two different functions: ESPN Mobile Updates and Twitter. Social Media has peaked during the past couple years through the utilization of such platforms like Facebook and Twitter. These websites have given advertisers new ways to reach their target market in a more personal manner. By interacting through these spaces the audience feels as though there is an actual conversation going on, instead of the advertisers forcing all of their “New and Exciting” products down our throats with flashy commercials (that we inevitably end up fast forwarding through anyway). Facebook and Twitter have given people a way to connect instantly around the world and feel connected despite being miles away from many of their “followers”.

With ESPN Mobile Updates you signed up on their website and would receive alerts directly to your phone with details from every game throughout the world. This wasn’t necessarily a new feature to ESPN but it became more relevant during the World Cup, because do to the fact that the Cup was taking place in South Africa, the time difference made it difficult for many viewers to actually watch the games at their broadcasted times.

Twitter took advantage of this soccer fever that was sweeping the world and decided to customize the appearance of tweets. Whenever you tweeted and created the hashtag  #worldcup, a soccer ball would show up, and then whenever you created hashtags with the abbreviations of the different countries playing in the World Cup, their respective flags would appear. These unique hashtags added some much needed pizazz to the public timeline, and it became a competition among the different countries to try and get their country to reach higher on the Trending Topics List than their opponent. Those this was directly advertising for FIFA, it definitely drove traffic to TV channels and websites that featured World Cup updates and scores. So in this case, Twitter almost seemed to provide some free “advertising” for channels like ESPN, ABC, NBC, and for the FIFA World Cup in general. Buzz will generate traffic, and twitter was definitely creating buzz at that time.