Worldwide Fan Parks for 2010 Soccer World Cup

Additional fan parks aim to internationalise the FIFA 2010 fan park experience

Dr Danny Jordaan, chairman of the local organising committee for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa has disclosed that several international venues are being considered for fan parks in addition to those in the nine host cities of South Africa.

The aim of the international fan parks is to ensure that the World Cup 2010 remains a globally inclusive event in spite of the prevailing economic anxieties, which could deter many fans from booking long-haul flights to follow their teams to South Africa.

Supporters will be able to follow the matches on giant television screens as the hosts target cities in which most interest is likely to be focused, including London, Tokyo and Accra, Ghana.

In addition to the venues to be used in South Africa, seven International FIFA Fan Fests will take place. Locations are:

Sydney at Darling Harbour, Berlin on Strasse des 17 Juni, Rio de Janeiro on Copacabana Beach, Mexico City at the Plaza de la Constitución, Rome at the Circo Massimo, with the exact locations in both London and Paris still to be confirmed.

The international cities were chosen by the study of a number of factors, with one of the main criteria being the popularity and passion for football in the country.

Cities were then analysed on (1) their popularity as tourist destinations; (2) their experience in hosting major international sports events; (3) their demographic background and cosmopolitan populations; and (4) the number of citizens they have from traditional football markets.

Finally, it was important to choose cities which had a demographic background that would result in big crowds even if the home country was knocked out.

"The images from our country will have a broader reach," Jordaan explained. "We are looking at internationalising the fan park experience – we want this to be an African World Cup."

Jordaan and his team are confident that the 2010 World Cup will have a worldwide appeal even if the economic downturn continues. They confirmed that for the 740 000 tickets released in the first phase of sales last month, there had so far been 506 000 applications across 103 countries.

Read our complete Overview of Fan Parks FIFA 2010.

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Interested in seeing where the stadiums, fan parks and other interesting 2010 locations are situated? Download our innovative Google Earth 2010 map.