Adidas introduced The Institute for the Study of Footballitis, a fictitious organisation where fans could explore their football mania, as the concept for its FIFA World Cup 2002 campaign. Our brief was to create an online community that encouraged visitors to regularly visit a fully interactive 'virtual' Institute. We aimed to raise the standard of Internet sports marketing by offering visitors an unparalleled degree of interaction with the online environment. Our goal was to fully integrate the online component of the Footballitis campaign into adidas' overall World Cup communication. Stages 1 and 2: each initial stage featured an online game based on new adidas products, the Fevernova ball and the Predator Mania boot. Stage 3: the centrepiece of The Institute for the Study of Footballitis is the World Cup Fever game, a free Playstation One-style download featuring adidas football stars. Visitors could explore players' rooms, create personalised messages with Sign the Planet, examine adidas products and monitor the spread of Footballitis. Auction Points accumulated through exploration could be used to bid on autographed adidas merchandise in online Auctions. The target of the site - to increase adidas.com's registered user-base - was exceeded before Stage 1 was completed. The outcome of the eight-month campaign was the giveaway of two tickets to the 2002 FIFA World Cup final in Japan. After this point, a new version of the World Cup Fever game was introduced offering two-player functionality, reinforcing the concept of the site as an ongoing community.