NTT Com Named Official IT Partner of UEFA EURO 2004TM
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| NTT Communications (NTT Com) has been named the official IT partner of the 2004 UEFA European Football ChampionshipTM (UEFA EURO 2004). UEFA Honorary Treasurer and Executive Committee Member Mathieu Sprengers (middle) and NTT Com Senior Executive Vice-President Shuji Tomita (right) jointly announced the agreement in Tokyo on February 13. Portugal will host the championship from June 12 to July 4 next year. As part of the agreement, NTT Com is providing the servers and hosting solutions for euro2004.com, the championship’s official website. Audiences worldwide will access euro2004.com to enjoy high-quality web content, even during peak traffic. Match-related content will include audio and video highlights, photos, match reports and more. NTT Com is honored to have been chosen by UEFA, in recognition of the reliability of its NTT/VERIO Global IP Network, as well as enterprise hosting and data-delivery capabilities. Dr. Tomita commented: “We are very proud to continue supporting one of the world’s most popular sports, European football, with our technology and experience. This partnership will be a great opportunity for NTT Com to demonstrate its technology to customers around the world. UEFA and NTT Com promise to cooperate in making this competition a success.” Dr. Sprengers noted: “Having worked closely with NTT Com for other UEFA events, UEFA is confident that the expertise and support it will provide will make the tournament in Portugal a huge success, and will help to bring the UEFA European Football Championship closer to football fans all over the world.” UEFA operates Europe’s largest soccer portal (www.uefa.com), which attracts four million hits per day, and now a new Japanese website, jp.uefa.com. All content on the Japanese site is currently free, but NTT Com plans to offer fee-based content eventually. The company will also construct a mobile portal for users of NTT DoCoMo’s “i-mode” mobile Internet service. Swiss-based UEFA is Europe’s largest soccer association. It organizes the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Cup, as well as the UEFA EURO games, Europe’s major football event, held every four years since 1960. NTT Com’s close cooperation with UEFA goes back to its co-sponsorship of the UEFA Cup finals in 2002 and 2003, and UEFA Super Cup finals from 2001 to 2003. Verio, NTT Com’s wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary, has been hosting uefa.com since 2001. NTT Com’s co-sponsorship of UEFA EURO 2004 represents a further strengthening of these ties. |
