International flags are flying over cars, bars and restaurants in Canadian urban markets today as the FIFA World Cup kicks off in South Africa, and Sympatico.ca is celebrating with a new microsite and iPhone app for fans.

The Soccer Fans 2010 website and app, launched this week, offers football followers live match updates, social media-style functionality for comments, photo and video sharing, and for those who like to imbibe with fellow fans, geo-location of bars and restaurants in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver that are showing the games. It also features team rankings, live chats and a ‘cheering’ section for fans.

Advertising opportunities include standard mobile banner ads for the app (in French and English), and standard leaderboard and big-box ads on the microsite. Soccer Fans 2010 will be promoted online at Sympatico.ca, with banner ads on Sympatico’s mobile network and with social media promotion. The app was developed by Quebec-based Absolunet.

With the thousands of additional people in town for the G20, the GPS and mapping functionality of the app is something Sympatico is particularly excited about, as well as the ability for fans to cheer for their home country via the app’s social media functionality, David Macphie, associate director, mobile network partnerships, Sympatico.ca, tells MiC.

The microsite is housed in Sympatico’s sports channel, which receives more than 800,000 unique visitors monthly (Omniture).