Soccer is the most popular sport followed by millions of fans around the globe. Tournaments like Champions League and Europa Cup are attracting millions of eyeballs from east to west. Teams like Manchester United, Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Liverpool are followed and worshipped not only in their mother nations, but across continents ; mainland Europe, Russia, Asia, and Central and South America. Players like George Best, Pele, David Beckham, Wayne Rooney transforms into icons, and becomes every young boy’s role models and dream of a future career. Rightly so, who wouldn’t want to play on the green pastures of Old Trafford, Anfield, or Estadio Nou Camp?  For every game there is a story. In every story there is a questionable decision by the referee, a handball which wasn’t called,  or on offsite which went on unnoticed. Dreams are born and dreams are shattered. Don’t we all  still remember the 1986 World Cup between Argentina and England and Diego Maradona’s infamous “hand of god”? It has been become a legend, and it will live on in our memories in years to come. And World Cup, yes World Cup, that’s the real battle field for our soccer heroes. This is the one event, which will gather and engage every soccer enthusiast from around the world every 4 years.

When we talk about soccer we often refer to England, Spain, Manchester United, Old Trafford, Barcelona, Argentina, Real Madrid, Nou Camp, David Beckham, Alex Ferguson. All of those are great soccer nations, teams, stadiums, coaches, and players, but where is the United States in this conversation? Why is the richest and most influential nation in the world nowhere to be seen on the soccer radar? Maybe people are busy with basketball, baseball, hockey, and football? Maybe soccer doesn’t fit in to the American lifestyle? Maybe there is not room enough for commercials in the two 45 minute action packed halves, and therefore not financially viable? Many of these questions have been asked over the years. What is it in soccer that doesn’t appeal to the American people?  But it can’t just be that, sport is like everything else, being promoted and marketed the right way and it will take off and become popular. And yes, soccer is a billion dollar business and many powerful attempts have been made to introduce soccer to the Americans.  George Best coming to the US to play for San Jose Earthquakes, World Cup in USA 1994, and David Beckham signing a record deal with the LA Galaxy are only a few of the attempts to popularize the sport in the United States. On top of this youth soccer has become a popular sport among kids. Despite this, soccer still had a hard time finding its way into the hearts and homes of the American people.

Is soccer in America changing? Absolutely. More and more people are getting interested in the sport every day and one of the main drivers for this recent surge in popularity is our new increased and expanded media channels, especially the internet. As we all know, the internet is a free and open forum. No longer are we bound by what the traditional sports and news channels decide to share with us.  Almost every home in the United States has opened its doors to information streaming  to our computers with information which was before no widely available. The internet gives America a “stream” of soccer information and live games from across the Atlantic. It gives the American soccer fan fellow  soccer supporters to discuss the sport with, and to debate over games. What was hard to “sell” to the American sports fan is now becoming more of an everyday reality. Scores can be found online in real time and standing tables can be followed and studied. With the natural increased appetite for the sport, more and more soccer gear, sports jerseys, balls, and other soccer memorabilia becomes available. The popularity of the sport and the interest in overseas teams is fostering a great desire to create a similar league. The MLS was founded in 1993 prior to the 1994 World Cup in the United States and has had a hard time manifesting itself as a popular sport amongst American sports enthusiast.  It has despite its struggle managed to produce better teams and players while building a supporting crowd, but only in recent years is the MLS starting to look like a mature league ready to take on the world.

Every goal, every dream, every new supporter is a step in the right direction for soccer in the USA and over the next few years soccer is going to become more and more popular. With focus put on soccer as a sport, spectator entertainment, and a financially viable franchise soccer is looking to have a great future here in the United States.

A great sport has landed in a great country. 

The mobile device industry is booming. It's been in the making for a long time. We've seen devices from the past such as Apple Newton, Atari Portfolio, Cassiopeia, and many others arise on the horizon just to go away again. We've seen waves of UMD (Ultra Mobile Devices) systems, we went through a generation of netbooks, added touchscreens, GPS, and internet connectivity in shape of wifi and cell technology. PDAs came and went, and came back, but this time around they were built into cell phones and suddenly they became an attractive gadget proposition for both business and leisure. The blackberry gave business people on the run the ability to communicate through email and messengers, iphone added the aspect of fun, yet delivered a business "machine". Our generation is a generation of mobile communicators. We send TXT messages all day long, both for fun, but also as a mechanism to keep business associates, clients, bosses, etc. updated about our whereabouts, schedules, and other important information requiring instant communication. We live in a world where information is in our pockets; sound, data, and video is only an armlenght away. We update people around us through social networks such as facebook and linkedin. We document our every day lives in an almost diary fashion through sites like twitter, with useful and less userful information. Much more data than ever, is collected, disclosed, and stored, maybe as valuable documentation of our time, who knows. What we see today, is most likely just the beginning of a whole new world connected. Mobile devices are connecting people and creating a grid of information. Information is changing hands, being digested, interpreted, and passed on. Today the pizza, the books, the music, and the movies are only a few clicks away. Whether it is tangible items we are looking for or simply data (books, music, video etc.), we can get it, and we can get it fast, and more importantly, we can get anywhere.

The internet was the first major step in connecting people, products, information, and services in a repository, yet a decentralized mechanism of holding these masses of information. It gave us ways to quickly communicate with friends, business partners, or colleagues across the miles, and in only decades made the world a little bit smaller. It brought us together in many ways, but also changed the way we were taught to communicate and interact with other people. It gave us great insight in foreign cultures, politics, lifestyles etc. at the speed of light. Businesses took this new tool in and used it to grow their markets, expand and improve their services. We now listen to radio stations from all over the world while before we would try and pick up a signal on an AM radio from a far-away land. We meet people with common interests, and no longer is distance of importance. We live in a virtual world where only the speed of transfering data is the limitation of how well we can share and contribute to this world. We can conduct business from a cafe in France or share holiday moments in a snap from a yacht in the carribean. We can keep track of our dear children through GPS, and we can monitor our homes, cars, and other valuables from the board meeting. We have managed to make this virtual world interact well with the "real" physical world, and this has given us many advantages.

The world of doing business is changing. No longer are we only faced with the choice of the yellow pages, local newspapers, magazines, and TV as channels for communicating our messages, sell our products and services, and in whole present our business to the outside world. But even the internet as we know it is becoming "old hat". Today most businesses have a website, with some taking full benefit of the technology while others just using it as an online business card. Most business owners would say "well, we have to be on the internet". Mobile devices is helping the individual disconnecting from their stationary work station and connect through this much smaller and lighter device. Many people see these devices as a liberation from from their computer. Finally they can again come home and have a bite to eat without checking their email first, or watching a full movie on TV without having to go to their desktop computer or laptop to see if there are important messages which needs their attention. Suddenly we have the whole encyclopedia at our fingertips, all our contacts, calendars, maps etc. constantly present and accessible. Whenever human behavior changes business has to change. Businesses can not run on the philosophy that people will want what they offer. No, they have to give people (the consumer), what the consumer wants. Business has to adapt to the way we live our lives and to our behavior as consumers.

Just like when the internet first took off many businesses were skeptical and not sure if that was the right place to spend their hard earned money. Both domain names, development and design services were expensive, and many of the early pioneers felt a little disappointed. They spent an arm and a leg on this new website, but no one came by. No one visited their brand new virtual showroom. Virtual real estate was a new phenomen, that we didn't quite understand, and just like real real estate development it is something that takes time. Basically what the early adapters were faced with was that they were building a store with a beautiful storefront, but in an area where there were no people, and there were yet no real ways of advertising and promoting their services. As time went by we saw businesses like ebay, google, and yahoo manifesting themselves by filling this gap. They gave the virtual business community ways to make their store seen and visited. They created targeted shoppers and essential gave the business owners sales. Sudddenly return of investment was on the horizon and many of the businesses following on the sideline finally deciced to take the jump and go online. Ebay was offering a virtual mall with the focus on the product much more than on a brand and gave everyone (even the ones without a website) the opportunity to buy and sell. Yahoo and google saw a niche in categorizing websites by subject and in a sense offered the users an online version of the yellow pages with the option of advertisers paying for virtual billboards - banners. What we see today is that the people and the businesses who believed in the internet back then are some of the folks who are today sitting on solid online assets and operations. They did not only grow up with the internet, they also helped in creating and shaping the internet to what it is today.

What we see today in the mobile device and communication industry is very similar to what we saw back then in the dotcom days. A booming industry, and exciting proposition, but yet with the skeptical onlookers. No doubt, just like the internet, what we see today in the mobile device market will look very different in 10 years, but no doubt, the most succesful people in 10 years will be the ones who grapped this opportunity, and helped shaping the direction. The internet as a stationary platform as we typically know it today is still a great spot for innovation and opportunity, but the mobile device boom has opened up a new opportunity which is still young and offers the chance for anyone to capture and master. Whether it is an existing business deciding to jump on the wireless bandwagon, or it is a new business idea with mobility and portability in mind, the mobile industry is the place to be for the next 10 years and beyond. Over the next couple of years we will see more and more of our traditional systems such as landline telephones, cable TV, over the air radio, CDs, DVDs, and bluray declining in return of the fast advancing data communication systems and some even become obsolete. It's time for existing businesses to make the right choices for the future and it's time for the entrepreneural minded to think faster and smarter. There is a world of opportunity waiting for us.

The world cup 2010 is going to be a very exciting event for footy fans, and even for people who are not so much following soccer. For the first time in history the world cup is held in an African Country - South Africa. The even has created much buzz and it seems like this world cup is going to be the biggest media event in the history of the FIFA World Cup. The world cup only comes every 4 years, so much in the world of technology can change in these 4 years, and certainly a lot has changed. We are more connected to the virtual cloud of information that we have ever been. We are pounded with information is shape of data, audio, and video. We can receive all the latest soccer information in all shapes and forms.

Goalserve is a live data feed services which provides data feeds to clients EVERY day 365 days a year. We provide a reliable service and work around the clock to provide users to our web portal with the latest news, as well as feeding data to our clients and partners. When the World Cup 2010 comes around we will be doing just the same. For us every day is the same, only the data we provide is what changes. Our service is consistent and it's our finest job to make sure that this is a reliable feed of data. Of course the World Cup is also an exciting time for us. We will be following and watching the games like no others.We will be working close with existing and new clients in order to make sure that implementations of the feeds are ready and working on the client side ready for kick-off on June 9th, 2010.

What Goalserve.com can do for your site is to ensure that traffic is not diverted to other sports sites during the World Cup. More than ever the average punter is going to look for scores, standings, statistics etc. and if your site is not offer this information some of your loyal following could be looking elsehwere to find this information, so if your site is currently not offer live data now is an excellent time to build this in to your offering. Goalserve.com can also help you with the implementation if your technical resources are limited.

Goalserve's XML feed is a great value add to your business whether it is a portal with soccer (football) information, a betting site, a mobile device, live billboards or anything else. To get started with Goalserve just drop us an email (mads@goalserve.com) and we will consult you and help you through the process of getting live data implemented into your site. We have many years experience in the industry and we can help putting you in the right direction both from a technical point of view as well as from a technical angle.

Soccer season is never really over, but the summers, when most leagues in Europe are taking a break it can be a little quiet if you have a web site relying primarily on soccer, unless of course, there is a major tournament like the world cup or the european championship going on. It might not be the worst thing in the world, it can be a time to organize and set things up for the new season, but really, wouldn't it be much nicer to be able to work on your business and generate solid traffic all year round? Adding multiple sports is for sure a way to ensure a more steady stream of sports fans to visit your site. It helps you in the search engines and gives many keyword entry points from google, yahoo, bing etc. With multiple sports you have a platform which is attracting people with interests in different sports, and as well as creating a site with appeal year around you are also creating a platform for many advertisers. For example, American Football is primarily popular in the States with some interest in other countries, but the traffic that you are generating will mostly come from the US. Cricket is a sport typically popular in the commonwealth countries; England, India, Pakistan, West Indies, New Zealand, and Australia. This gives you a variety of income sources when it comes to advertisers and sponsors, you appeal to advertisers who are interested in particular demographics, either by sport or by country.

As mentioned in one of my other blogs it is interesting to look at this grid we are unfolding. First we discussed XML data feeds in general and how Goalserve.com can help providing live sports XML data feeds for your business. We also covered multi languuage feeds, and now we are covering multiple sports. The first blog I wrote was about mobile applications. Simply because this is a subject which is very dear to me. I have a huge personal interest in the mobile application market and I see this market becoming a major player in distributing sports data, both when it comes to data in shape of scores and results, but also live streaming audio and video. Sports is something which is an import part of many people's life. Something we follow on a daily basis, and something we unfortunately can't always find time to follow to the extend we would like. With the mobile devices we are suddenly putting ourselves in a position of being able to follow our favourites sports no matter where we are. I remember listening to Live Five in UK to get the latest scores from the Premier League games. At that time radio, TV and newspapers were the only mechanisms of distributing this data. If you missed a game you would have to call friends to find out if they got the final score, or wait for match of the day the same evening.

We have come a long way. We are now through the internet able to get the data served to us anytime we want, even with advanced match and league statitics. We can get real time odds to go with the scores. We can watch highlights from the games. We can share results on social networks. We can email and SMS the data friends and much more. The possibilities are endless. Goalserve.com is positioning itself to provide a solid set of sports data and then work with each individual business to fulfil their business requirements. We don't sit still "just because the soccer season is over". No, we work every day on adding more and more data to our existing feeds and adding new feeds to our portfolio. We do the running while we make you score the goals.

There will be many blogs to follow discussing many aspects of sport and data feeds. I will in later blogs talk about devices on where to deliver feeds (we touched this in the first blog about mobile applications and sports data feeds). New delivery mechanisms such as iphone, android, blackberry, kindle, facebook, twitter, etc. etc. are just more ways to fille out this grid of covering the market and extending the reach and earning potential. We will also be talking about using the data feed as indirect mashup. Data which is used on sites for Search Engine purposes and to value add, but not to directly generate revenue. Examples of sites are sports merchandise, youth sports clubs, etc.

If you find these blogs useful and you would like to talk to use about how we can help your sports business please feel always free to contact us: mads@goalserve.com

Many people believe that English is the language of the internet. Well, that's only half the truth. Granted, most sites are in English and users have accustomed themselves to this. Most internet users are prepared to use a site in English even if English is not their first language. Here in the US we almost tend to think that ALL sites are in English, but that is far from true. There are millions and millions of sites in several variants of Chinese, sites in arab languages, not to mention Spanish, Russian, French, and German. We just don't really come across them very often. For some businesses having their site is just English is fine. These businesses cater to the American market, and have no desire to reach out further. For others, they just haven't really thought of the huge market share they are cutting out just by having their site in just one single language. Well, it's a good point that even a visitor in China would be able to navigate and use a site in English and also understand the scores. Most sports enthuthiasts around the world will have no problem understanding "Manchester United - Newcastle United 2-0", it's almost a universal language, but ... yes, but .. the search engines looks at it a little different, and also international users tend to use the search engines in their respective countries such as google.dk, google.de, etc. etc. or maybe they even use particular search engines developed for their country such as baidu.com. These country specific search engines shows content in the language of the user, and will therefore not show sites with only english content.

We talked about this in the previous blog, about how hard it can be to keep your site or application fresh and updated with the latest data if it has to be done by an individual or even by a small group within an organization. Well, then think about trying to do this 10 times, by having 10 languages, and most businesses wont have the capabilities within their staff to provide content in chinese, french, swedish, german, danish, and more. Goalserve.com can help you with this too. We provide our feeds in multiple languages, so not only to we take the bulk of work out of having to update your sports site, but we also help you giving your site an international reach. The sports industry is a billion dollar business, so why settle with only reaching out to a small percentage when you can take on the whole world. The truth is of course still that in this competitive market you will still, most likely, only get a small market share, but a small market share of the whole world is still a lot better than a small market share of a small market place.

With goalserve.com's large offering of sports, countries, languages, content etc. we can for a very low monthly feed bring your business on the map when it comes to providing fresh sports data. We provide sports from American Football to Cricket to Tennis to Handball. Sports with different levels of popularity around the world, and if your site is a generic sports site covering many sports we will be able to help you fill the content in all areas. We can at a very low fee also create custom scores, custom languages, and unique combinations of data. Every business has its unique needs and we are here to cater for that. After all, it's your business and you know how you want to run it. We don't. We help you achieve your goals.

In the following blog we will be talking about how multiple sports can attract sports enthusiasts year round. Why sit still just because Football season is over? Why narrow your advertising potential by only covering one or two sports?

I don't know if you have noticed, but what we are describing in these blogs is a like a grid, a grid unfolding to give you the best potential for return on your sports business.

I think we can all agree that it's important for a web site to stay on top of the game by having ever changing content. First of all, who wants to visit a web site with boring old and stale content, or even worse a web site with news from last year. It simply screams "I am not being maintained". For many businesses, especially smaller businesses, and start-ups it can be a daunting task to keep the content fresh at all time. Most people have the best intentions and for two weeks on top of updating the news, photos, coverage, results etc., but as other business tasks become urgent the focus on the content fades. It happens, and it happens ALL the time. It is understandable why it happens. The simple truth is that most business and site owners simply don't have the time to be content writers, CEOs, COOs, CFOs, and CTOs all at the same time. In the internet industry most businesses have realized that it's impossible to maintain the technology themselves and they outsource this job to server companies who will host and maintain their web sites and their technology. Most businesses appoint a CPA to take care of the books. They rightly realize that they can't do everything themselves and they hire experts to take care of those tasks. This is the right way to do it. The same should be the case when it comes to content.

Goalserve is a provider of live sports data. We provide many types of businesses with this kind of dynamic data. Our clientele varies from web site owners to mobile application developers to pub / bar owners.These businesses either have a specific requirement to display this kind of data to their customers, either as a direct driver of their business providing live data on a live sports site or indirectly as content mashup, or as a value adding service. Goalserve provide businesses with data which for most would be impossible to keep updated unless they are hiring 100 people and setting up data entry centers. We can do this, and at a very reasonable rate, because we don't only provide this data to one business, but to many.

And why do you need this data? You need this data for many reasons. The most obvious one is to provide your clients / visitors with fresh and interesting sports data. Data that will make them come back every month, week, day, or even every hour. You give your user a reason to keep checking back. You provide a real and a valuable service. Other reasons are for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). By adding this mashup data to your web site you give the search engines something to "chew" on, pages to be indexed with many different combinations of keywords and keyphrases. Imagine this example; Manchester United is playing against AC Milan and David Beckham is playing for the Italian team, on the same page there is also a sports news feed (which we provide too), this news feed is talking about the Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger. Let's set up this scenario, rumours are spreading that Arsene Wenger is looking to make an offer on David Beckham. This page with the scores for those two teams mixed with the news feeds is being indexed by google. Someone goes to google and searches for "David Beckham Arsene Wenger" to see if they can find anything about those rumours, and even though the page I am describing is not talking about the rumours the combination of David Beckham and Arsene Wenger has still been snapshot and indexed by google and this page comes up in Google. Because the data changes so often there are 1000s and 1000s of keyword combinations being indexed and suddenly your site becomes visible in the search engines on keyword combinations that you didn't even think about.

In the next blog I will talk about multi language modules for sports data and how that can help your business tremendously. Sport has it's own language, but it is also followed by every man and every woman in every nation in the world. People who may not necessarily be english speaking. On top of this, we will also be talking about the huge SEO benefits of having multiple languages.

Sports content and mobile devices is an exciting new world. Sports is something that often happens in places which is not at home. This can be your friends house, the pub or the bar, a stadium, or maybe you are simply at work while there is a grand game being played and you don’t want to miss out on the excitement of following the game (or at least the scores, touchdowns,  bookings etc.).

First I am going to talk a little about mobile devices in general to describe the opportunity itself those devices are for most businesses and industries, and then talking about mobile devices as a platform to deliver sport to the palm of the user and the “billion dollar” business it is.

Don't we all miss the late 90s when investors were pumping millions and millions in to internet start-ups? Wasn't it exciting to be a geek and suddenly have the fame of a rock star? It happened so fast and went away so fast. Much has been written about this era and these phenomena, and there is probably not really a whole lot left to be said. One thing that I think we all agree and agreed on is that despite the burst of the bubble the internet was here to be and we have seen healthy and sustained growth since. It's been 10 years. 10 years which in many ways have had its ups and downs for most industries, mostly downs. Yet, the internet has despite the obstacles progressed, developed, and matured.

Today is almost a little bit like being back to the "good old" dotcom days. Over the last decade or two there have been many attempts to corner the mobile market with PDAs such as Palms, Newtons, and iPaqs. These portable devices (or should we call them  gadgets) have intrigued gadget hunters and early adaptors, but it wasn't until the iPhone that these devices finally took off. Why is that? The answer is internet and connectivity. Suddenly information and digital communication could be in the hands of every man and every woman. Now we are 100% "wired" at all times, we can talk to friends next door or abroad by voice, email, or messenger. We can get directions and restaurant reviews wherever we are, we can read newspapers from around the world. Anywhere. Anytime.

It has taken some time to get where we are today. We have dabbled when choosing the dominant phone operating systems, and only in the last couple of years have we landed on a fairly solid foundation, and a route for the future. And even if the foundation is not solid, at least it's A foundation. Blackberry kicked it off with phones which had advanced, yet simple to use graphical user interfaces with iPhone to follow. iPhone took it to the next level with touch screens, app stores and much more. They also managed to make the iPhone and almost as important accessory as a pair of shoes.

Of course Google didn't want to sit back and see companies like Apple and Research in Motion (and to some extend Microsoft with their Windows Mobile) take too big a piece of this new "internet boom" and therefore launched, in classic Google style, an open platform for mobile devices - Android was born.

Today we have landed with 4 major (and a couple of other) mobile operating systems; iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry. This suddenly gives us a much better chance of developing mobile applications for our businesses.

As you can see this is a great opportunity in itself, but let’s look at it in sports terms. Let’s look at how these devices are changing the world of sports and how it is important to be part of the game to stay a major player in the industry.

Many of the major players in the industry like ESPN have successfully launched iPhone applications, but your business does not have to be the size of ESPN to be in the game, and now is the time. Now is the time for small and medium sports businesses to get mobile and become competitive in a market which is new to all of us. It is new to me, it is new to you, it is new to big players like ESPN and SkySports, so it’s a great opportunity to jump in and be as good as the “big guys” or maybe even better, because it’s much faster for smaller businesses to adopt.

I have through my business goalserve (http://www.goalserve.com) developed a number of iPhone applications and it has been very successful. Goalserve is a sports score portal as well as a business which deliver sports data feeds to web site owners, sports bars, TV tickers, and now more and more to mobile devices.

Here you can also take a look at our soccer iPhone application:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=338229138&mt=8