USA Bid Committee having a ball keeping its fans engaged

The World Cup ended nearly a month ago. And FIFA won’t award the 2018 and 2022 World Cup host cities until December.

So if you’re the USA Bid Committee, hoping for one of those two coveted selections, how do you keep the casual and hard-core soccer fan excited and engaged in the interim?

Keeping fans involved is a big issue for a lot of sports that have gaps between big events or rallying points. Most Olympic sports fall in this category. The key is creating compelling content and a reason for people to engage on an ongoing basis. GoUSAbid.com has faced this challenge since the site was launched, and it has more than met the challenge every step of the way.

An opportunity to win an autographed soccer ball, signed by the U.S. men’s national team, is the latest lure. That’s what the folks at GoUSAbid.com are offering for the low, low price of inviting five friends to sign up and support the bid. Its goal is to get a million fans to back the effort. The autographed ball is the perfect short-term vehicle to help reach its goal, add to its database and extend the scope of its viral campaign.

It’s another smart effort by the committee, which is working on the behalf of the U.S. Soccer Federation in its effort to bring the World Cup back to the U.S. With more than 917,000 people having already signed the petition, breaking the million mark is a sure bet.

A good goal for FIFA: Use technology, get it right

So now the final stage is set: Spain vs. The Netherlands in what should be a glorious World Cup final, a fitting culmination to the 31-day tournament.

If only . . .

If only the players and the hundreds of millions of fans around the globe who will tune in to watch Sunday’s finale could count on the officials to call a competent game, a 50-50 proposition in a tournament marked by missed goals and handballs, phantom fouls and routinely botched offsides calls.

Of course, the officials are human and fallible. The real fault lies with FIFA, the sport’s governing body, and its president, Sepp Blatter, whose prehistoric mentality toward instant replay has helped create a digital-age mess. Fans worldwide watch the games with the benefit of modern technology – live streaming, slo-mo replays, a terrific on-screen offsides guide – and yet FIFA has refused to make such tools available to the referees, thus creating a huge gap between its technology-savvy fans and the game. The tournament’s -- and the sport’s -- credibility is suffering the consequences.

Technology is a wonderful thing. Video replay has been around since 1963 (yes, 1963).  Instant replay has been widely used in the NFL for the past 25 years. And the NBA, MLB and the NHL have all integrated replay in one form or another. Even a fairly simple technological advance – a microchip in the ball that could indicate when it crosses the goal line, an advance that would have signaled Frank Lampard’s infamous goal should have counted in the England-Germany game – has been spurned in favor of old-fashioned human error.

FIFA and Blatter have no excuse not to leverage all that replay has to offer for the World Cup. This is not some mom-and-pop operation. The tournament is a billion-dollar venture, and by failing to use replay to ensure the fairness and accuracy of officiating, FIFA undermines the very sport it’s charged to promote and grow.

Social media campaigns help hand Nike the World Cup crown

The World Cup won’t end for another 17 days. But we don’t need to wait that long to know the winner of the brand wars. It’s Nike, hands down.

Rival adidas is one of the official sponsors of the World Cup, but with Nike dominating TV, online and print media, adidas may as well be brand X.

When award-winning Wieden + Kennedy partners with Oscar-nominated director Alejandro G. Inarritu (21 Grams, Amores Perros and Babel leap to mind), it’s no surprise that the campaign they create would be memorable.

And Nike’s “Write The Future” commercial delivers on that promise. It’s a stirring three-minute paean to the sport and its stars, including Didier Drogba, Fabio Cannavaro, Franck Ribery, Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo (not to mention cameos by Roger Federer, Kobe Bryant and Homer Simpson).

But what truly elevates Nike’s brand is the use of social media surrounding the campaign. It has done a great job of engaging users in creative ways by incorporating Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, among other platforms.

Will U.S. fans shell out cash for World Cup mobile TV?

As the first round of the World Cup progresses, it's providing an interesting petri dish on how U.S. fans consume the game.

Aside from the mainstay of watching the tournament on ESPN (and ABC), there are three main planks of the network’s strategy that bear watching.

First and foremost is whether U.S. fans will pay to watch on their cell phones. ESPN is breaking ground by offering live match coverage on mobile.

But are fans here willing to pay the price? Are they that devoted to the game, or the fortunes of the U.S. squad?

GoUSABid lays foundation for U.S. Soccer and World Cup

While the eyes of the world will turn to South Africa this week for the start of the World Cup, the USA Bid Committee has been working hard to ensure the eyes of the world will be on the U.S. come 2018 or 2022.

For a study on a website and an initiative done well, simply take a look at GoUSAbid.com, created by the USA Bid Committee. It is a separate entity from the U.S. Soccer Federation but it is working on behalf of the USSF.

The goal of the committee is to get FIFA to award the World Cup to the U.S. in either 2018 or 2022 (FIFA will award both in one round of bidding, an unusually efficient approach). The goal of the site is get people actively involved, grow their fan base, increase their database of names and capitalize on the surge in interest that comes with a World Cup.

GoUSAbid.com is a well-designed, well-planned, well-executed effort. It has already prompted more than 450,000 people to sign a petition to bring the tournament back to the U.S. (which hosted the tournament in 1994), a decision FIFA will make in December.

Star Wars meets the World Cup: A fun idea to discuss

So much of today’s technology is created or adopted outside the U.S. that it gets overlooked by media here. Think 3D, virtual life, or of wireless and quick response codes, audio tweets, augmented reality and radio frequency identification.

Such was the case with last week’s bid by Japan to host the 2022 World Cup. Lost -- well, not exactly lost but certainly under-reported and under-tweeted --  was Japan’s plan to beam holographic broadcasts of the event around the globe. Think Princess Leia and Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi meet Lionel Messi and Wayne Rooney.

For the small sum of $6 billion, Japan is suggesting that by 2022 it could project lifelike 3D images onto real pitches in real stadiums around the world and have fans watch players playing real games, holographically speaking.

That technology doesn’t yet exist. But it may within the next five or 10 years.