The 2010 FIFA World Cup has kicked off to a resounding response from audiences in South African and around the world with a number of new records being set by fans who have been clamouring around televisions screens to watch matches, equally impressive has been the number of visitors the official FIFA.com website.

FIFA revealed earlier this week that over 10 million South African’s tuned in to SABC and SuperSport to watch Bafana Bafana’s opening game of the 2010 FIFA World Cup against Mexico.

This figure eclipsed the previous record for a football match in South Africa watched by a television audience which was around 7.5 million viewers who tuned in to see Bafana Bafana face off with Brazil during the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup semi-final last year.

On Wednesday FIFA further announced that during Tuesday’s World Cup match between Brazil and Korea DPR 265 million pages were accessed by nearly 10 million visitors on FIFA.COM this builds on the total of 1.6 billion pages accessed by nearly 53 million individuals on FIFA.com in the first two weeks of June – a record in itself.

By comparison, a total of 48 million unique users visited FIFA.com over the entire four weeks of the 2006 World Cup. The previous daily record was set on 22 June 2006 when tournament winners Italy played the Czech Republic and generated 250 million views.