For one whole month, all eyes will be on what is arguably the second most important sports tournament (next only to the Olympics maybe?) in the world as the 2018 edition of the World Cup kicks off in Russia this June 15. 32 countries and millions of football fans from around the world will be glued not just to their television sets but their computer and mobile devices as well as they will try to devour everything about their favorite teams, players, and any news that will come out of the tournament. So of course Google will have tons of content and updates for football fans on their various apps and platforms. Here’s what you can expect and access on your mobile device and desktops.
Google Search and Google News
Even from the search app, you’ll already find so much football goodness as you will be updated in real-time about all the games, group standings, stats, and even trending players and search terms during the entire tournament. 30 minutes after the end of each game, you’ll already find match highlights, video recaps, and of course the goals. You can also follow the games either through watching live on partner broadcast feeds or if you can’t watch, get score and play-by-play updates, live images, stats, tweets, etc. You can even pin real-time scores on your Android homescreen or on your Google app. Just search for the games that you want to be updated and you’ll find all that information.If you just want one place to get all your World Cup info, you can get a dedicated World Cup tracker on your Google News app. This will give you a spotlight feature for better visualization of live scores. You will also get highlights, results, and schedules.
Google Assistant
If you don’t have time to search and read, you can ask Google Assistant to do some work for you. Just say, “Ok Google, who won the match between Germany and Mexico” or “Hey Google, who has scored the most goals so far?” or “Ok Google, how many times has Germany won the World Cup?” and hopefully, you’ll get the answers you need. You will even get a few BTW stats in case Google is feeling a little trivia-y.
YouTube
If you enjoy the more visual aspect of the game rather than just reading about it, YouTube is of course the place to be. You will get highlights from official FIFA broadcasters, depending on where you are. For example, Fox and Telemundo in the U.S., the BBC in the U.K., ARD Sportschau in Germany, NHK in Japan, Kwese in Nigeria and across Africa, Televisa in Mexico, Latina Televisión in Peru, etc. If YouTube TV is available in your market, you can watch all the games live and you can even record matches through the cloud DVR feature.
Google Maps
Watching football is always fun when you’re with a lot of people so a lot of fans are always on the lookout as to where to watch games in sports bars. By June 14, you’ll be able to see the “good for watching sports” highlights on business listings in Google Search and Google Maps. You can now view two of the stadiums in Russia, Otkrytye Arena and St. Petersburg Stadium, through Street View.
Google Trends
Google always has fun gimmicks when it comes to visualization of stats and search trends during the World Cup. You’ll see an interactive and real-time view of the World Cup searches during this time. You’ll see things like rankings of most-searched players, embeddable maps and charts, and other fun things for the search geeks out there.
Google Play Store
If you’re still not satisfied with all these things that Google is offering, there are tons of apps out there that you can download from the Google Play Store. You have the FIFA official app, a Panini sticker album if you like the trading cards type of app, Onefootball Live Soccer Scores which is a favorite of die-hard fans, and other football-related apps.
SOURCE: Google
