Our Neighbors, Through the Eyes of a World Soccer Fan

Once every few years the whole world joins together around a single event. The Olympics do it to an extent, but there’s no other event quite like the World Cup. TV statistics help us get a handle on this. In the USA an estimated 111 million people watched this year’s Super Bowl (this may be thrown off a bit by viewing parties, for both the game and commercials). The Chinese Olympics drew a total of 3.6 billion viewers. The 2010 Fifa World Cup in South Africa drew a total of 3.2 billion viewers, marking a 10% rise in viewership over the 2006 world cup. Brazil, at 200 million residents, is the largest country to host a World Cup, since the USA hosted in 1996. I understand that the Olympics and World Cup are both drawn- out spectacles with many individual games, but I anticipate, given the worldwide infatuation with soccer, or futbol, that this year’s final will be the most watched event in history, topping the Beijing Opening Ceremonies as listed by official ratings.

I am proud to say that I was a part of the World Cup this year as a spectator and fortunate enough to garner some TV time with Miss Liberty (that’s me, wearing No. 4), during the USA vs Portugal Match. I think these moments of coming together are necessary for us to consider our fellow humans living far from us, in situations nothing like our own. I had the chance to interact with people from nearly everywhere, and broadcasts reach every nation as well. I believe that more and more people will tune in for these truly international events as technology becomes even more widely disseminated, as the world gets seemingly smaller.

At Liberty Packaging, and the Intercept Technology Group, we are vigilant of the fact that the world is getting smaller and more connected. But we also take time to savor moments like these where we shift our focus from the distance between us to how close we really are to our worldwide neighbors.

We hope that you have taken time to savor this special cultural event of world class soccer and bear witness to the moments of togetherness that we can share with even our most far flung neighbors.

Written (and lived) by Albert Greenhut (No. 4) of Engineered Materials, Inc. For more of Mr. Greenhut's writing, please visit: Inside Static Intercept

Intercept Technology Packaging products fit within a sustainability strategy because they are reusable, recyclable, do not contain or use volatile components (No VOCs, Not a VCI) and leave a smaller carbon footprint than most traditional protective packaging products.