Building on 32 years of futbol history as an official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup (although a formal relationship began in 1974), the Coca-Cola Company recently launched a global ad campaign centered around its current theme of “Open Happiness” and backed by an aggressive digital strategy.

This campaign comes off the heels of the soon-to-conclude FIFA World Cup Trophy Tour which to date has seen the famed 18-carat gold trophy travel 93,958 miles (151,217 km) in over 225 days, crossing five continents and touching the lives of more than 500,000 futbol fans. The tour, which began on September 19, 2009 will do one final circuit in South Africa.

In the last couple of years, the world’s marque sports shoe and apparel company has faced increased competition from a reinvented brand in adidas and the innovative newcomer Under Armour.  Between the two competitors, adidas has a particularly strong social media presence. Their adidas Originals Facebook Page boasts nearly 3 million people that “Like” the brand while the Official Under Armour Facebook Page has over 220,000 “Likes”.

Nike elects to take a slightly different approach by leveraging fan created Pages on Facebook in addition to their official Pages like Nike Football and Nike Sportswear, but beyond Facebook and Twitter, one of the most critical keys to the Beaverton, Oregon-based company’s success is their viral video marketing strategy.  Nike protects its house by consistently reaching millions of global fans on YouTube.

This week’s Saturday Night Live episode hosted by former Golden Girls star, 88 year-old Betty White, claimed the highest ratings and largest audience since November 1, 2008 when John McCain and Sarah Palin appeared. And who do they have to thank? A fan and his Facebook Page.

After White starred in a viral Super Bowl Snickers commercial, a 29-year old superfan named David Matthews took to the 450+ million user platform in an attempt to garner 5,000 fans before writing a letter to SNL producer Lorne Michaels.

After being picked up by USA Today and Perez Hilton, Matthews says the Page jumped from 8,300 fans to over 22,000. According to AllFacebook, the Page went from 30,000 to 230,000 fans last week. The “Betty White to Host SNL (please?)!” Facebook Page now claims over half a million “likes” or “fans”, which is simply astonishing.

A few weeks ago, I contributed to an e-book put together by fellow sports and social media enthusiast Jason Peck. The focus of my post was industry predictions for 2010 and given the nature of our work at Activ8Social, I decide to focus on individual athletes. I came up with three primary growth areas to keep an eye on: Promotions, Live Video, and Mobile.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a few examples and decided to point them out to better demonstrate my predictions. Here’s my original post, coupled with a recent example of each primary growth area. Drop me a line and let me know how you see sports and social media growing in 2010 (hopefully by leaps and bounds).

Activ8Social wants to give a special shout out to Rajon Rondo, starting PG of the Boston Celtics, for taking the time to make a trip overseas and meet with injured US troops from Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. Rondo and his family visited Ramstein Air Base in Germany before training camp.

On his popular Facebook page, Rondo told fans “It was a humbling experience and i was just glad to be there for support and see the smiles on everyones face. Truly thankful.”