Hundreds of thousands of fans have jumped on planes, trains and into cars and headed to Germany to attend the World Cup games but many more are staying at home and following the tournament online. According to figures from comScore, in April there were 5.7 million unique visitors to the official 2006 FIFA World Cup site hosted by Yahoo! and 4.2 million visited in March.
"With the tournament still weeks away, the level of traffic to the World Cup site in April — not to mention the substantial increase from March — demonstrates the worldwide popularity of the World Cup and the potential of the Internet as a powerful marketing channel to reach this global audience," said Bob Ivins of comScore Europe.
Europe contributed the greatest proportion of visitors in April with 51%, or almost 3 million people. The next highest region was Asia Pacific, with 17% of the total, nearly 1 million people. Traffic from Latin America represented 12% of the total, and only 10% of the visitors came from North America, highlighting the still limited popularity of soccer in the US.
The global interest in the World Cup, along with the marketing opportunities associated with the tournament, were emphasized by the visits to the separate language areas on the World Cup site. In addition to the English language site, the German, Spanish, Japanese, French, Portuguese and Italian language versions all received significant traffic during April.
Echoing the comScore findings with regard to the lack of World Cup interest in the US, the latest poll from Global Market Insite (GMI) found that 56% of American World Cup "fans" do not know that the World Cup will take place in Germany, and only 10% plan to follow the games.
Despite an estimated $420 million invested in official partnerships by US-based corporations to gain worldwide visibility, the country lags behind other countries when it comes to being passionate about soccer, even details like who the sponsors are. GMI found that over 50% of declared US soccer fans either said they "didn't know" the companies that were official partners of the games, or incorrectly identified them.
The GMI survey data also showed that over 95% of all global fans will follow the cup on their televisions, with the vast majority (93%) choosing to watch at home. Of the Americans who are definitely going to follow the World Cup, 78% said they would view it on TV while 40% will track team progress over the Internet.
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