Nike is not an official World Cup sponsor but, thanks to some creative marketing, that doesn’t stop consumers across the globe from linking the company to the world’s largest soccer tournament. The Nielsen Company analyzed online blogs, message boards and social networking sites and found that the sports shoe and apparel giant was more frequently linked to the World Cup than any of the tournament’s official partners and sponsors.

Starting on June 11, the FIFA World Cup football tournament has finally arrived in South Africa. In our last feature on the biggest sporting event in the world, Olly Wehring takes a look at how the country’s winelands are gearing up for the football-fest.

South African Tourism scales up call center, integrates Facebook and Twitter social-network analysis. The 2010 FIFA World Cup gets underway on Friday, and it will bring hundreds of thousands soccer fans to South Africa over the next month. To cope with an anticipated ten-fold increase in visitor calls and online contacts, South African Tourism has turned to Salesforce.com for a rapidly scalable and social-network-connected CRM environment.

Mike Jackson tells us 5 things we need to know about how brands should be deploying their marketing activities at this summer’s 2010 FIFA World Cup tournament.

Champions League winners Inter Milan has announced a new sponsorship strategy which will cut the number of team sponsors from 60 to 25.

The move, which comes after a similar move by fierce rivals AC Milan, was the brainchild of Italian sports marketing agency RCS Sport.

Yahoo Inc said it signed British soccer star David Beckham as a brand ambassador ahead of the World Cup tournament in a move to draw more users to the online media company’s products.

Football icon and two times FIFA World Cup™ champion, Franz Beckenbauer today proudly launched The Quest; adidas’ new interactive FIFA World Cup™ football campaign during a press conference and photo call at the official opening of the adidas PR Headquarters, Jo’bulani Central in Johannesburg. Beckenbauer, unveiled an exclusive painting by the adidas African artist team which features 32 players from the 32 federations playing at the FIFA World Cup™ and signals the start of adidas’ activities in South Africa.

In an exclusive interview for MeetTheBoss.tv, Herbert Hainer, CEO Adidas, speaks openly and honestly about his efforts to knock Nike off the Top Spot in 2010 by leveraging the firm’s $200 million World Cup sponsorship push to its full advantage.

Dutch creative firm Wonder Years have crafted this KNVB Supporter Shirt, a shirt that’s brilliant in its simplicity and effectiveness. On the outside? It’s just a regular orange Netherlands national football team shirt, but wait until you see what happens once Oranje puts one past goal.

Here are the new Real Madrid home and away kits produced by Adidas for the 2010/11 season.