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Tag: football World Cup

  • Adidas whips up football frenzy ahead of FIFA 2022 in India

    Adidas whips up football frenzy ahead of FIFA 2022 in India

    MUMBAI: As the countdown to the start of the 2022 FIFA World Cup- scheduled to take place in Qatar from 20 November to 18 December- begins, football frenzy seems to have already caught the world’s soccer fans by storm. Come November, diehard fans will be making their once-in-four-year pilgrimage to Qatar in the Arabian Peninsula to watch the ultimate footballing clash among nations for the coveted trophy.

    In India the buzz was created seven months before the start of the tournament with the launch of Al Rihla – the official match ball for the World Cup- a feat repeated 14 times. Launched by sports brand Adidas, the ball aims to provide the highest accuracy and reliability on the field due partly to its new panel shape and surface textures. Translated as “the journey” in Arabic, Al Rihla has been inspired by the architecture, iconic boats and the flag of Qatar.  

    Additionally, Indian fans can now root for their favourite teams, dressed in the team colours and soak in the atmosphere, sitting in the comfort of their homes while their favourite nation battles it out with their opponents. To whip up the emotional connection and interest in the Cup, the official supplier, Adidas, revealed the ‘Home and Away’ federation kits created for national teams participating.

    Thus, Indian fans can now identify with their favourite teams like Argentina, Germany, Mexico, Spain, and Japan, wearing their favourite kits. These kits not only integrate different cultures and represent gender equality but also the spirit of each nation, according to the brand. It comprises Mixtec art created by the indigenous people of Mexico to ‘Yatagarasu’, Japan’s mythological three-legged origami crow and vibrant purple hues in Argentina jersey.

    The eco-friendly kits, in tune with adidas’ commitment to conserving natural resources, are created using lightweight, heat-applied sportswear. Fans can join Adidas’s ongoing campaign to end plastic waste as well. According to the brand, the kits are made of 100 per cent recycled polyester and contain 50 per cent Parley Ocean Plastic—using plastics collected from remote islands, beaches, coastal communities, and shorelines, preventing it from polluting our oceans.

    FIFA and Adidas share a 50-year-old relationship, with the latter supplying the official match ball for all FIFA World Cup matches from 1970 onwards. Closer home, the brand has been the flag bearer of creating a buzz around one of the world’s most watched games with its initiatives. Even though India is not among the playing line-up and may be far from qualifying for future editions of the blue riband tournament, there is no lack of fan support for the playing countries.

    In India, traditionally, fan choices range from South American teams like Brazil and Argentina to European teams like Germany and Spain. There’s also the populace of Goa rooting for Portugal considering their history, as do fans from Pondicherry who throw their weight behind France.

    To provide fans with a once-in-a-lifetime ’watching experience, ‘ marketers and brands in India developed innovative schemes, as witnessed during the 2018 World Cup. Hotels and entertainment offer various services to the fans, while football-crazy states like West Bengal, Goa and Kerala paint streets and colonies in the colours of their preferred teams. The media also adds to the frenzy by giving ‘kick-by-kick’ updates on games happening on distant shores.

    This time the buzz is only expected to get bigger and better for Indian football fans. Post the array of offers from adidas, which includes dressing the fans with their favourite team colours; it is only a matter before other companies start providing exciting offers to the Indian fans. So, bring on the munchies, toot the vuvuzelas and groove to the FIFA tournament anthem wearing your favourite team kit while they step onto the field.

     

  • UCWeb Football World Cup Trends Report: 100 million page views generated on UC Browser during FIFA World Cup: 1.5 lakh hours spent on video consumption; Cristiano Ronaldo Most Popular Player

    UCWeb Football World Cup Trends Report: 100 million page views generated on UC Browser during FIFA World Cup: 1.5 lakh hours spent on video consumption; Cristiano Ronaldo Most Popular Player

    MUMBAI: Consumption of football-related content touched 100 million on UC Browser, for the recently concluded FIFA World Cup 2018, according to a joint data trends report released by UCWeb and Paytm. With a dedicated team at UC Trends, a data service and trends index platform, UCWeb generates data trends & insight report to help partners with valuable insights on a regular basis. For this year’s edition of football world cup, UCWeb has joined hands with Paytm to capture the online buying consumption pattern in addition to content consumption behavior.

    1.5 lakh hours of accumulated video viewership on football

    IPL is still the most popular sports tournament leading with a popularity index of 420 million over FIFA World Cup which is at 320 million. Video remains one of the most popular formats of content consumption receiving a total of 1.5 lakh hours of cumulative video viewership, equivalent to a time span of 17 years. UC Platform witnessed maximum traction from the cities of Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune and Guwahati.

    France vs Argentina was the most watched match of the World Cup and England emerged as the most popular team of FIFA World Cup 2018, followed by Argentina and Russia. Portuguese player Cristiano Ronaldo remains the most popular player, with a popularity index of over 5.6 million. Lionel Messi, Neymar, Harry Kane, Mohamed Salah were the other top-rated players. The top 3 most popular topics which highlight the world cup content consumption were, France Vs Croatia (Final Match) followed by Argentina VS France (Qualifier) and Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo. Sportzwiki emerged to be the most influential media in world cup coverage with an influence index of 1.7 lakh, followed by Today’s Trends and Cricket Fever. At the same time, Cricket fever, Punjab Kesari and Jagran respectively came out to be the top 3 consumed media.

    Commenting on the insights from the report, Damon Xi, General Manager – India & Indonesia, UCWeb, Alibaba Digital Media and Entertainment Group said, “The 2018 World Cup in Russia has seen a record number of soccer fans tuning in on a variety of devices. This year’s World Cup has proven to be a record-breaking event with mobile internet driving consumption of digital football & sports content. We aim to empower our media partners and advertisers to leverage these insights and better locate their audience.”

    Large Participation from UC We-Media bloggers to provide original content

    UC We-Media has become the No. 1 content platform with a wide array of segments including entertainment, lifestyle and sports. During the World Cup, nearly 1000 influential writers participated in UC We-Media World Cup-themed writing competition, and a total of over 10,000 pieces of original content was generated by these bloggers throughout the World Cup. The top 3 bloggers, Pratibha Saraswat followed by Satish Mishra and Mikkhail Vaswani encountered more visibility with 200 thousand followers growth in one week which is ten times faster than usual.

    ‘Drinks and Beverage’ drives the biggest jump in sales over previous month for Paytm

    According to the Paytm consumption data during the World Cup, Drinks and Beverages were one of the most consumed product categories among football watchers, who spent time in front of TVs while consuming more beverages. Drink and Beverages category received the biggest rise in sales as compared to the previous month before the World Cup. For binge eating, most people preferred healthy snacking option this year with Almonds and Cashews topping the list of bestselling snacks. Also, other top categories included Body care, Dairy products, Home cleaning and Cooking Essentials. The city of Delhi bought maximum from Paytm during the World Cup.

    UC Browser has been a leading content platform for accessing sports content.  It has witnessed a jump of 50% unique visitors during the recently concluded IPL 2018 with over 2.5 lakh relevant articles to meet the increased demand for cricket fans. Innovation on engagement with sports users was also prominent with 30 million votes supporting “UC Miss Cricket” campaign which made a debut at New York Times Square.

  • Café Coffee Day’s Beano campaign gets 1.2 million views

    Café Coffee Day’s Beano campaign gets 1.2 million views

    MUMBAI: Café Coffee Day’s latest social media activity is enjoying success like never before. For the very first time, the brand has come out with a video campaign in a five part series. The first part of the series, which was released last month, has received an overwhelming response of 1.2 million views to date.

    CCD’s first video campaign ‘Beano and the Bean’ is a lapse stop motion video painted with coffee itself. It revolves around a fun and endearing character called Beano, the caveman. The first part, a two minute video, introduces Beano and shows how he discovers the coffee bean in a fun and entertaining way. The objective behind the video was to create a deeper engagement with the audience with something that was fun and subtly revolves around coffee.

    CCD has seen success in many of its digital media activation like for World Hug Day and for the Football World Cup, which led to trending hashtags of #LetsHugOverCoffee and #CCDFootballquiz respectively, to name a few. 

    CCD realised that its previous social media activities around art and doodles always received high engagement and responses from followers. So the brand decided to go ahead with creativity led idea for its first video campaign. The brand roped in an artist who created hand drawn art using different densities of coffee decoction to narrate a story. Hence, the highlight of the video, which has not only excited the creative community, but the audience at large is firstly the use of hand created coffee art in a stop motion video and the other is the storytelling aspect. Moreover, the content is fun and the character is someone that everyone finds loveable.

    CCD has just released the second part of the Beano series, to celebrate Valentine’s Day. It is a 1.10 minute video that shows how Beano goes about meeting that someone special.

    With Beano, the idea was not to promote the brand or prove a point, but to create a property that the audience will embrace.

  • Café Coffee Day’s Beano campaign gets 1.2 million views

    Café Coffee Day’s Beano campaign gets 1.2 million views

    MUMBAI: Café Coffee Day’s latest social media activity is enjoying success like never before. For the very first time, the brand has come out with a video campaign in a five part series. The first part of the series, which was released last month, has received an overwhelming response of 1.2 million views to date.

    CCD’s first video campaign ‘Beano and the Bean’ is a lapse stop motion video painted with coffee itself. It revolves around a fun and endearing character called Beano, the caveman. The first part, a two minute video, introduces Beano and shows how he discovers the coffee bean in a fun and entertaining way. The objective behind the video was to create a deeper engagement with the audience with something that was fun and subtly revolves around coffee.

    CCD has seen success in many of its digital media activation like for World Hug Day and for the Football World Cup, which led to trending hashtags of #LetsHugOverCoffee and #CCDFootballquiz respectively, to name a few. 

    CCD realised that its previous social media activities around art and doodles always received high engagement and responses from followers. So the brand decided to go ahead with creativity led idea for its first video campaign. The brand roped in an artist who created hand drawn art using different densities of coffee decoction to narrate a story. Hence, the highlight of the video, which has not only excited the creative community, but the audience at large is firstly the use of hand created coffee art in a stop motion video and the other is the storytelling aspect. Moreover, the content is fun and the character is someone that everyone finds loveable.

    CCD has just released the second part of the Beano series, to celebrate Valentine’s Day. It is a 1.10 minute video that shows how Beano goes about meeting that someone special.

    With Beano, the idea was not to promote the brand or prove a point, but to create a property that the audience will embrace.

  • Women increasingly tuning in to the soccer World Cup

    Women increasingly tuning in to the soccer World Cup

    MUMBAI: If you thought that only men follow soccer think again! Soccer’s governing body Infront’s governing body Infront has announced the results of a study that show that women are increasingly following the football World Cup.

    It thus reaches far beyond the traditional male football audience in its universal appeal.

    Almost four in 10 viewers are women. The figures reveal that an impressive 37 per cent of the global adult audience watching the Fifa World Cup are women. Sponsorship Intelligence, a UK-based research driven consultancy appointed by Infront Sports and Media and Fifa Marketing and TV, has thus farcollated overnight ratings in 44 markets globally.

    The audience in Argentina demonstrates the greatest equality – 50 per cent of the viewers are women. 44 per cent of Argebntian’s viewership during the 2002 World Cup were women. Indeed, evidence to date, suggests that the Fifa World Cup TV audiences in Latin America especially Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay and Mexico, are more gender-balanced than in many other parts of the globe.

    In Korean 45 per cent of viewers in this country are reportedly women. This trend continues across Asia with audiences in Singapore and Malaysia comprising 45 per cent and 41 per cent women respectively.

    Germany has experienced a 17.6% percentage upsurge in the number of women viewers since the 2002 Fifa World Cup (40 per cent versus 34 per cent) and the Netherlands (38 per cent ), Hungary (38 per cent) and Switzerland (37 per cent) also experienced substantial increases.

    The female viewership figures are higher for Portugal (43 per cent), Italy (42 per cent) and Serbia (40 per cent). Major football markets like the UK and Spain are not far behind, with 36 per cent of viewers being women. In France, the figure is 34 per cent.

    However in the Czech Republic and Greece the World Cup is mainly watched by men. 24 per cent of women watch the World cup in these two countries.

  • Murdoch’s ‘The Times’ to launch US edition

    Murdoch’s ‘The Times’ to launch US edition

    MUMBAI: Rupert Murdoch’s London-based The Times newspaper announced that it will launch a US edition on 6 June 2006 and will be available to subscribers at $1, in retail outlets across New York and New Jersey.

    The 64-page newspaper will be printed and distributed by the New York Post, also owned by Murdoch’s News Corp. It will however, repackage stories from the British publication and be edited by John Mair, presently the editor of the International edition.

    The US edition will also be printed in a smaller tabloid-style format.
    Commenting on the launch, The Times editor-in-chief Robert Thomson said, “This is a key moment in the development of The Times as an international media brand. We have seen a large increase in our Times Online readership in the US and the appearance of the newspaper on the streets of New York marks the next stage in our print and web expansion.

    “The Times has one of the largest international networks of any newspaper in the world and US readers want and need sophisticated global political and economic coverage.”

    As part of its strategy, the US edition has been timed to coincide with the football World Cup that kicks off on 9 June in Germany, for which it will be giving extensive news coverage.