Paul Morris·

Apple Website Gets FIFA World Cup 2018 Final Overhaul

Apple has injected some World Cup media magic into its French and Croatian regional Apple.com websites ahead of FIFA World Cup 2018 final in Moscow, Russia.

To celebrate both countries reaching the final of soccer’s biggest tournament, the Cupertino-based company has added a themed video which runs at the top of the page when visited.

Sadly for England supporters around the world, and much to the belief of most of the country over the last few weeks, football is most definitely not coming home thanks to the England team crashing out of the tournament last week in an extra-time defeat to Croatia. Croatia, much to the surprise of the world’s sporting fans, progressed to the finals of the World Cup where they will come head-to-head with Didier Deschamps French team, Sunday afternoon in the Russian capital.

First spotted by a French website, when someone from that region visits the website, a short three-second video clip plays at the top of the site featuring the French flag and scores of soccer/football balls as part of a themed animation. The video then seamlessly transitions away and the regular Apple.com content is shown.

For those in Croatia, the same animation is played and animated out of view but with symbols of hearts and fire showing rather than having a flag-based representation of the country. Apple is one of those companies which doesn’t regularly make changes to its iconic homepage, save for important events or product announcements, so it’s clear that the company feels that the World Cup final is something to behold.

In fact, the World Cup final can join the death of Steve Jobs and Global Accessibility Awareness Day as events which have spurred the company to change its homepage. As a company, Apple is all about inclusivity and bringing people together, which is exactly what the World Cup does, and definitely has done this year.

The event has clearly galvanized countries and supporters all over the world and has resulted in Apple overhauling its homepage, updating Siri, and even creating a series of soccer-themed videos showing how to capture glorious imagery and videos using iPhone.

Check out the animations for yourself by heading to the French or Croatian regional Apple.com websites.

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