Soccer World Cup in Brazil also being played on the Internet

ENGLAND, UK: With just six months till the start of the World Cup in Brazil, it is in the digital world where the first encounters are already being disputed with fans starting to wage their particular battle to get tickets and follow their teams.

According to a ranking drafted by Ticketbis, the platform for buying and selling tickets, Brazil is the country with the highest number of entries in Google searches since July, with nearly half a million hits. German fans lead their country to second place in this classification of ‘purchase intent' with 77,000 searches.

Other countries with less football tradition like the US and Canada were surprisingly positioned in third place on the podium with 57,000 queries, with the UK placed 4th with 45,000 searches.

The current World Champions, Spain, currently holds thirteenth position with only 4,500 searches. However, it is expected that Spanish fans will intensify their interest as rivals and venues have now been confirmed.

Battle on social networks
The media buzz generated by ‘Brazil 2014' on social networks has steadily mounted as countries have classified while the duel between the two ultimate platforms, Facebook and Twitter, becomes increasingly evident.

According to Ticketbis, 63.82 percent of Spanish-speaking users comment on the Brazil World Cup via Facebook, which makes it the most visited social network to share the news of this major international event. Twitter, meanwhile, is back with 36.18 percent of total comments.

This trend is reversed among English-speaking users who seem to prefer the micro blogging network with Twitter accounting for 60 percent of the postings about the World Cup, while Facebook hardly reaches 40 percent of posts.

The World Cup has already registered about 100,000 posts by English-speaking users of which nearly 2,000 are linked to ticket purchases for the World Cup, according to the Spanish ticketing website, Ticketbis.

Mobile apps
With the increase of mobile traffic, more and more applications are being created specifically to cover the progress of important events. The World Cup in Brazil is a clear example of this and with six months from the start of the competition, more than 120 apps for Apple and Android have already been developed, with 80% of them being available to download for free.