FIBA – FIBA online and the World Championship (1/2): Join in the action

Record numbers expected with international basketball more accessible than ever

GENEVA/ISTANBUL (FIBA World Championship) - In 15 days the FIBA World Championship gets underway and the many websites of the fiba.com online family are already hotting up, with traffic increasing on a daily basis.

FIBA pages on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are buzzing with excitement ahead of the Championship. These three sites have not only helped reach out to fans, but have also provided much needed feedback on the developments and the challenges in basketball today.

Passion is the word which best describes the discussions that animate the FIBA run social networking and community sites. Proud of your National Team? The many thousands of custom made jerseys that have created using the My FIBA Jersey Facebook application give a sneak preview of the level of support teams will enjoy this summer. The players are even getting on board, as Argentina's Andres Nocioni created the number 13 shirt he will be sporting.

News spreads like wildfire thanks to FIBA's tweets, and our followers' re-tweets. Tens of thousands of basketball fans discovered within minutes – much to the delight of their ear-drums - that there would be no vuvuzelas in the arenas of Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir and Kayseri. Updates to rosters and pre-tournament warm up game results are all only a tweet away.

But the event website Turkey2010.fiba.com will obviously be THE place to go for all the information on this summer's Giant Get-Together. With specific event-related information – travel tips, guides to host cities, detailed game reports and a home page for each participating team – it is designed to help travelling fans, while ensuring that those who can’t attend nevertheless feel at the heart of the action.

Watching the action will just not be enough for certain fans, while others will be stuck in the office with no TV in sight. They can turn to FIBA’s always popular – and revamped – Live Stats will cover every part of the court and scoreboard.

When we talk about Live Stats, we don’t just mean boxscores. Every imaginable statistic is obtainable thanks to customisable modules, while you can also see who has attempted what shot from where thanks to the court map. E-mail services that are offered when you register (for free) with FIBA Live Stats include quarter-by-quarter and post-game statistics as well as our very popular Daily Newsletter, which delivers all the day’s news straight to your inbox.

For fans on the go, the lightweight version turkey2010.fiba.com/mobile is ideal for mobile devices, giving them access to what they want, wherever and whenever they want it. And it is giving basketball fans access to the sport that is one of FIBA's main aims in all its online activities.

FIBAtv.com will stream all FIBA World Championship games live, allowing those fans living in countries where the event is not being broadcast, to follow all the action for only a small fee.

With such an extensive list of online services providing instant information about the tournament, the question is not ‘will you be following the FIBA World Championship?’ but ‘How will you be following the FIBA World Championship?’.

In part two, read about the growth of FIBA’s online services and the knock-on effects they are having.

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