World in Motion

May 27, 2010 3:08 AM

Pop World Cup 2010!

Following the roaring success of their Europop 2008 tournament, won by Switzerland, freakytrigger.co.uk are hosting the Pop World Cup 2010. The format mirrors that of the forthcoming World Cup in South Africa, but instead of football, each country will be putting forth a single pop song for each match, with the winner decided by a vote. The rules:

Tracks from participating countries go head to head in a tournament to decide which country is the champion of pop. 32 pop pickers are assigned a country to 'manage'. They pick a song by an artist from that country for each match they play. The Pop World Cup resembles the actual World Cup (the qualifying teams and draw also matching) with group stages leading to a knockout system but there are no penalty shootouts (although there will be a tie-breaker for when two teams get the same number of votes each). Match winners are determined by whichever country/song receives the most public votes. To win a match a team has to secure at least a 58% majority of votes, otherwise the match is declared a draw. Anyone can vote and matches last a few days so there is plenty of time to listen to the songs...

When managers pick songs they must be by artists from or at least based in the country they're managing. An act can only appear once in the tournament. Selected acts can feature members from different countries as long as one is from the appropriate country (whether born there or having since moved there).

There is no age limit on selected songs and they can be from any point in history. They do not even have to have been released anywhere as long as the act credited is from the appropriate country and this is proveable.

The first match ran from 9-14 February and was a narrow victory to South Africa. You can either look at the results of each match individually or listen to the weekly podcast (listed from most to least recent). The matches being played at the moment are the quarterfinals between Nigeria and Ghana and Cameroon and Spain and they're still open, so listen and get voting for your favourite!

As with everything that has anything to do with anything nowadays, the PWC2010 has a twitter feed if you just can't stand to wait to find out the results.

posted by Dim Siawns (3 comments total)

I'm intrigued as to what the DPRK entries will be but can't get the videos to work here in (perennial World Cup failures) China :(
posted by Abiezer at 11:38 AM on May 27, 2010

Ooh, I tell a lie, the podcast plays fine. My dubious memory of checking out the link three hours ago hasn't survived drink taken.
posted by Abiezer at 11:40 AM on May 27, 2010

Brazil out on the first phase? This is bogus.
posted by Trielli at 12:40 PM on May 27, 2010 [1 favorite]