聯合翻譯有限公司/聯合翻譯社

The FIFA World Cup is the world's premier single-event sports tournament. It is also the most widely viewed event in the world. The 2010 World Cup in South Africa was broadcast to 204 countries. Over 700 million people, a significant proportion of the world's population, are believed to have watched the final of the competition in both 2006 and 2010.

Fans are especially excited for this year's edition as it is being hosted by Brazil, which is considered by many to be the spiritual home of the sport. This will be the first time that the tournament has been staged in South America since 1978, when Argentina hosted the event. Twelve cities across Brazil will host matches for this year's World Cup, with the final being played in Rio de Janeiro.

The structure of the tournament is simple. The 32 teams have been divided into eight groups of four. The four teams in each group play each other once, earning three points for a win, one point for a tie and zero points for a loss. Afterward, the top two teams in each group advance to the round of 16. Each contest in the round of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals and final is a single elimination game. A penalty shoot-out is used to determine the winner if there is a tie in any of the elimination games after extra time.

A total of approximately 3.3 million people from Brazil and abroad are expected to attend the 64 matches. The allocation of tickets for the event has caused some controversy, however. The majority of the tickets were distributed to groups such as sponsors, media rights holders and VIPs. For each individual match, just 8 percent of the tickets have been reserved for fans of a competing nation and in total only 1.1 million were put on sale to the general public. It is perhaps unsurprising then that the demand for these tickets was immense. In just the first phase of sales, FIFA received over 6 million requests for tickets. The upside of this situation is that fans can look forward to full stadiums when the tournament kicks off.