TransCity

At the 2006 FIFA World Cup, the NFL American Football League has discovered once again that ‘futbol’ is the most popular sport among Hispanic Americans. A newly designed Spanish-language website, NFLatino.com, has now been launched to educate Hispanic ‘futbol” fans about American football.

NFLatino.com features real-time NFL and team news, schedules, scores, standings, expert analysis from columnists Alejandro Morales and Adolfo Cortes, Hispanic-player diaries, and interactive polls. The site also contains areas geared toward beginners who already know futbol, but want to learn more about Futbol Americano. Mr. O’Reilly, director-marketing for the NFL, said internal research found 72% of the 40 million U.S. Hispanics said they have spent or would spend time engaging with the NFL.

Right now, NFLatino.com is in a soft launch. The league plans to put its promotional power to use in late August as training camps wind down in anticipation of the league opening its season Sept. 7. “We’re going to do a number of things nationally,” Mr. O’Reilly said. “We’ll have two or three Spanish-language spots that we’ll run that will drive people to NFLatino.com, as well as radio, and we’re working with AOL Latino to promote it there as well.”

Source: Advertising Age