MUMBAI: Multimedia platforms proved central to fans’ enjoyment of the recently concluded 2010 soccer World Cup as the game‘s governing body Fifa – through its web and Twitter feeds – successfully delivered a range of complementary digital experiences to football enthusiasts around the world.
In addition to the many millions of fans watching the matches on TV, over 220,000 people followed Fifa‘s official tweets on Twitter, while members of the five million-strong Fifa.com Club swapped 120 million virtual stickers and made over one million comments on the website as they debated the finer points of the tournament.
With its content and interactivity over the course of the tournament’s 31 days, Fifa.com attracted over 250 million visits – approximately 150 million unique users, triggering seven billion page views: 410 million of those page views were recorded in a single day. When England and the US played simultaneously, Fifa.com technicians reported a throughput of 1,000,000 hits per second at the height of the activity.
Fifa adds that the level of demand for its online content has surpassed expectations. Fifa.com welcomed three times more unique users than in 2006, serving pages to 150 million people over the course of the 2010 Fifa World Cup. Fifa exceeded forecasts for page impressions by 1.5 billion. The 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa has witnessed a new level of digital engagement from fans across the globe.
