Football fans cheer with Emirates onboard, online, and on-the-ground

Onboard, travellers flying with Emirates can enjoy exclusive screenings of the most recent matches, plus live text updates of current matches being played. It's a service proving to be extremely popular with passengers, with some flights showing more than 80 per cent of passengers tuning in to the match action.

In addition to broadcasting all FIFA World Cup™ matches across its entire fleet, Emirates is also providing football lovers with the chance to follow every kick of the 64-game tournament online, thanks to its Matchcast sponsorship on FIFAworldcup.com, hosted by Yahoo!

Available in nine languages, FIFAworldcup.com provides fans with the most comprehensive coverage of the 18th edition of the FIFA World Cup™ and is already attracting an average of five million fans every day. And it's the Emirates-sponsored Matchcast that provides the best live match coverage on the web.

Detailed, direct and dedicated to the facts of each game, the Emirates Matchcast features play-by-play commentaries, the official FIFA Data Feed, users Fanchat, photographs of the action published in real time, trivia and football polls.

On the ground, the airline has installed special viewing stations equipped with plasma TVs and projection screens at 16 international airports, showing live matches, as well as highlights from earlier games, information regarding forthcoming matches, team standings and the latest FIFA news.

Mike Simon, Emirates' Divisional Senior Vice President Corporate Communications, said:

"Since the first match kicked off on 9th June, we have been receiving phenomenal and very positive feedback from our customers. At some live match screenings, our airport viewing stations have attracted enormous crowds of cheering fans of all ages and nationalities, all keen to catch some football action before their flights. You can really feel their passion and excitement."

The popular Emirates 'cubes' at the airports have been attracting a plethora of passengers, many wearing their national team jersey and waving flags and other items during the live broadcast from the 2006 FIFA World Cup™.

Emirates' FIFA World Cup™ viewing stations can be found in airports at New York JFK, Zurich, London Heathrow, London Gatwick, Nagoya, Kansai, Shanghai, Narita, Brisbane, Hamburg, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Sydney, Milan, Rome and Dubai.