A Fever Growing In The U.S.

Back on June 11, 2006, I described the World Cup as "A Fever Unknown To The US". The years have served to bring more of us on board.

From Germany in 2006 we are now again in the midst of this epidemic in the nation of South Africa. And it's really the BEST of all sports. The one most children play and aspire to than any other. It's simple, pure, and physical in a way that denies one team an advantage over another simply because their equipment is more expensive. It's real sport!

This tournament's competitors look a lot like the last round's in 2006 at first glance. 19 out of 32 nations are returning teams to the competition in 2010. Upon closer consideration, 13 teams have been replaced, and that's a really big deal for nations around the world. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica, Sweden and the Czech Republic have been replaced by nations like Nigeria, Cameroon, Chile, Denmark and South Africa. But how to calculate the affect? The combined population of the 13 nations which participated in 2006 (and not in 2010) is 238,000,000 people. The population of the nations whose teams replaced them is 335,000,000. That's almost 100 million more nationalistically vested fans for this go around. It's a marketer's fantasy.