The 2010 World Cup starts this Friday, and lasts until July 11th.
Imagine if “Super Sunday” lasted for an entire month, and you’ve got an idea of what this means to fans of the world’s game. The last World Cup (2006) drew an average of 93 million viewers per match — every match, for a month — with an estimated 715 million watching the Final.
So, to say that I’m going to be a bit distracted in the coming month is a bit of an understatement.
This year, the World Cup will have far greater reach than ever before, even here in the United States. This blog post lists all of the sources for following matches: TV (ESPN, ESPN2, ABC, Univision), Online (free and legal streaming via ESPN3.com and Univision Online), Mobile devices, and more. This doesn’t even talk about the countless thousands of unofficial blogs, podcasts and streaming sites.
ESPN also has a great dedicated website, aggregating news, scores, video and more (including a bracket predictor that I just filled out for the fun of it).
(….and for another smile, Google “World Cup” and scroll down to the bottom of the page.)
One month, 64 games. Bring it on.