FIFA launches its own ‘Global Stadium’ initiative for Brazil 2014 – a digital hub offering minute-by-minute World Cup updates.
The rights owner is encouraging football fans to congregate at this online hub – effectively a tournament-specific new section on its revamped website at http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/index.html – which aims to drive social media engagement with FIFA and its property.
FIFA rolled out this central tournament engagement platform on the last day of May and has begun to use the twin hashtags #WorldCup and #Joinin to unify its digital communications through the tournament.
Football’s global governing body also launched its first ever Instagram account, the social site’s official World Cup Instagram feed, as part of the initiative at http://instagram.com/fifaworldcup#.
The Global Stadium hub will ‘open’ for all of the World Cup’s 64 matches and each game will also have its very own ‘Global Stadium’ hashtag.
The site will offer users information and content spanning team news, data and statistics, plus it incentivizes engagement by enabling users to vote for the man of the match and win the kick-off ball used in each game.
‘We aim to provide an all-round digital companion so that billions of fans can join in and share their excitement. Only the World Cup and digital can create this worldwide conversation,’ says FIFA director of communications and public affairs Walter De Gregorio.
Comment
FIFA’s fan reach is already huge – it has 280 million Facebook likes and 7 million Twitter followers – and the Global Stadium will not only connect to existing fans, but also looks set to boost these numbers further.
Indeed, its new Instagram account attracted 40,000-plus followers in its first few days.
However, one might question how comfortable sponsor Sony is about this rights holder initiative – as there are close similarities in copy and idea between FIFA’s work and Sony’s own ‘One Stadium’ campaign.
The official World Cup partner’s own ‘One Stadium Live’ – a social network curating social media content across different languages into the most ‘popular, relevant and recent’ tournament topics across Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
Links
FIFA Global Stadium Website
FIFA Global Stadium Twitter
FIFA Global Stadium Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/fifaworldcup
FIFA Global Stadium YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/user/FIFATV
FIFA Website
