Well, the 2010 World Cup is finally upon us as people across the globe eagerly anticipate the kick-off for the opening games. And while excitement will soon reach a fever pitch, the anticipation has clearly been mounting for the past few months. One illustration of this building excitement has been the global traffic to FIFA.com during May, which can be seen below. In just one month, global Internet penetration of FIFA.com doubled from 0.11% to 0.21%. It is sure to jump substantially higher as the official event gets underway.
What’s also interesting is which regions of the world appear to be demonstrating their excitement for the event, if we use visitation to FIFA.com as a proxy. While every global region will have representation and millions upon millions of fans following, Latin America and Middle East-Africa showed the highest relative visitation to FIFA.com in the month leading up to the event. While Latin America accounted for just 9% of the total global Internet audience in May, it contributed an astounding 39% of the audience to FIFA.com. Middle East-Africa, just 6 percent of the global Internet audience, represented 12% of the FIFA.com audience.
Comscore will be following these and other global Internet trends for the 2010 World Cup, so come visit the Comscore Voices blog or @comscore for additional updates!