Sporting events are one of the few things that can trump political news, movie announcements, and celebrity weddings, and this year’s big event is the World Cup.  What we Americans refer to as “soccer” is known to the rest of the world (and certain American fans) as “football.”  Pretty much everywhere but the US, this is a bigger event than the Super Bowl or even the Olympics.  While the rest of the world might think we Americans are completely out of the loop, we are not quite doomed:  we do have access to the major tools for discussion and news for the event, like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.

The World Cup, according to an Adobe Study, is slated to be the most social global sporting event.  What does this mean?  It means long-held traditions are not turning up their noses at the emergent sources of communication.  Rather than depend solely on TV commercials, radio announcements, and newspaper headlines, the world is getting not only headlines from online news sources, but up-to-the-minute updates and insights via tweets and posts from team representatives and individual players.  Although Americans do not make up a major percentage of the fans, the die-hard fans do not have to experience the game alone or with indifferent compatriots.  Thanks to social media, fans can connect to other fans anywhere– Japan, UK, Germany, France .  .  .  you name the country, and they have fans earnestly tweeting and posting away anything and everything to do with the World Cup. 

So why should those not interested in “football” pay attention to this event?  Easy– it’s a perfect example of how quickly our world has changed.  Gone are the days where you could only watch international events on TV and read about in the newspaper.  Our generation has moved way beyond “The world is watching,” now the world is communicating.  Anything we want to achieve in this millennium is undeniably going to use social media in some respect.  So, if you are going to succeed, you’re going to need to know what-is-what with social media.    

This year’s World Cup brings together a host of teams to Brazil, but its online engagement is a completely global event.  More people will be talking about the competition on their social media accounts than actually watching it.  Anyone who wants to stay on top of the games can find comrades and discussions aplenty online.  In the same manner, anyone who wants to stay relevant in todays globally connected world must willingly jump into the game of social media.   

For more information, check out Variety.com.