Red Devils do their thing online

It wasn’t just chicken and beer vendors who were busy during Korea’s World Cup matches. The IT sector, Web portals in particular, got a bump in their businesses, too.

NHN, which operates Korea’s No. 1 portal Naver, said yesterday that 29 people predicted the correct scores for the Korea-Greece, Korea-Argentina and Korea-Nigeria matches - and 463,000 didn’t. “The 29 people will get free tickets to use Naver’s music file service,” NHN said in a press release.

Daum, runner-up in the portal market, reported that some 3.4 million people connected to its live, streamed transmission of the games, and 46 percent of them were using smartphones.

“We believe the latest data shows that online broadcasts of sporting events have much potential not just on the Web but also in the mobile environment,” said Kim Ji-hyeon, Daum’s mobile business director.

SK Communications, which runs No. 3 portal Nate, also released a report yesterday saying that a total of 32,048 postings were uploaded onto World Cup related articles on their portal from 1 to 10 in the morning. “Considering that headlines usually get 400 to 500 postings a day, this is a record level,” SK said.

By Kim Hyung-eun [hkim@joongang.co.kr]