FIFA World Cup Mania!
By the time you read this newsletter, the 19th World Cup competition will be well underway. Started in 1930 and held every four years, the ultimate soccer (football) competition this year is open to the world's top 32 teams playing before 2.4 million + ticket holders and a live global average audience of 125 million per match. The opening match between the United States and England drew 17.1 m viewers, making it the most watched opening match ever. Overall, the 2010 global viewership is expected to increase 5% over the 2006 competition, and the final on July 11th may be the most-watched sporting final in history.
FIFA World Cup History
Prior to this year's competition, did you know that
- Brazil has the highest number of championships (5), number of wins (64), and goals scored (201). Brazil is also the only country to appear in every World Cup
- Italy played the most number of consecutive matches without conceding a goal (in 1990)
- New Zealand logged the most number of miles in a single qualifying campaign (55,000)
- The United States of America has qualified 8 times
- My native country, Canada, has only qualified once (in 1986)
Two Cool Tools
To help fans get the most out of the World Cup, SAP has launched two cool tools. Based on SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, the FIFA 2010 Football Experience enables you to analyze team and player performance, explore team statistics, and even predict game outcomes. You can also share your experience using these analytics with the football experience community.
The second cool tool is the FIFA World Cup 2010 Match Finder using Xcelsius. For those lucky enough to attend the games, this dashboard based on SAP Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius) and Google Maps helps you locate where matches are played.
SAP Crystal Dashboard Design Challenge
Speaking of world competitions, the last big world sporting event, the 2010 Winter Olympics was held here in Vancouver, Canada. The SAP BusinessObjects Community ran a dashboard challenge based on a datasset from this event, and once you see the submissions, I'm sure you'll agree that they are very impressive! Winter Olympics Dashboard (Xcelsius) Challenge Winners post by contest judge and SCN Mentor, Mico Yuk, to find out who won and why.
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