Yahoo! Scores With World Cup

Yahoo! (YHOO Quote - Cramer on YHOO - Stock Picks) is hoping to get more out of the World Cup than the U.S. national team did.

The most-visited Web site tells TheStreet.com it is in discussions with FIFA, the international body that runs the World Cup, to continue as the tournament's official Internet partner.

The company's current contract with FIFA expires at the end of the current World Cup, says Dan Berger, a spokesman for Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo!. The company and FIFA jointly run the World Cup Web site and split the revenue. Berger declined to provide specific financial information on the deal, which started in 2001.

"We are currently in negotiations with FIFA and one of the topics is renewal," Berger says. Unlike fans of the U.S. team, which bowed out of the tournament Thursday with a 2-1 loss to Ghana, Yahoo! is "incredibly pleased with the results so far," Berger adds.

During the second week of the World Cup, an average of 169 million pages were viewed by 4.2 million visitors, and 523,000 videos were streamed each day at the official site run by Yahoo! and FIFA, according to comScore Networks.

The World Cup's popularity highlights the Web's growing use as a mass medium. Video content also is surging in popularity among advertisers because it keeps users on a site longer than they would be otherwise. This also may give Yahoo!, whose shares have tumbled more than 20% this year, a boost to its bottom line.

"It's fair to assume that they will probably get some favorable returns based on their sponsorship of the World Cup and the operation of the official Web site," says Scott Kessler, an equity analyst with Standard & Poor's, who rates Yahoo! shares as a buy.

Yahoo! attracts about 130 million unique visitors, the most on the Internet. About 25% of the traffic going to the World Cup site, which features video highlights and news, is coming from the main Yahoo! portal, according to the market research firm Hitwise Inc.

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