The World Cup is officially underway. Last night Shakira and Juanes rocked the stadium in an opening concert. Today, Mexico and Uruguay were the first Latin American teams to play. And Univision… well, they’re maximizing the fact they own the exclusive Spanish-language broadcast rights to “el mundial” in the U.S. There’s cross-promotion galore on all their shows and it seems like all of the network’s on-air talent is in South Africa.
Anchor Jorge Ramos hosted portions of the network news from Johannesburg and took part in the opening ceremony commentary. Ilia Calderón, from “Primer Impacto,” Peruvian network news correspondent María Luisa Martínez (who’s missing out on the Joran van der Sloot story in Lima), Raúl de Molina from “El Gordo y La Flaca,” and Fernando Fiore, of “Repúblic Deportiva” are just a few of the folks I had the chance to see on the air on the first day.
Besides showing the games in HD on Univision network, World Cup fever can be seen on Telefutura and Galavision. Univision.com is also offering live streams of the games. There’s a dedicated site for the World Cup in Spanish. Univision has even ventured to create a site in English, to cover all bases.