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The World Cup final at Soccer City in Johannesburg will be among 25 matches at this year’s tournament broadcast in 3-D.
Twenty-five of the 64 matches in South Africa will be filmed by at least seven dedicated pairs of cameras, with record five-time World Cup winner Brazil the most featured team.
All three of its group matches are among the 15 first-round games scheduled for broadcast.
Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Argentina, South Korea and Nigeria will each appear twice, with England and France among the 10 sides who must advance to stand a chance of their matches being shown in the format.
The first ever World Cup match broadcast in 3-D will be the opening game between South Africa and Mexico at Soccer City.
Four more of the 10 World Cup venues will participate in the venture: Ellis Park in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth.
“We wanted to make sure the key matches would be in the production schedule,” FIFA director of TV Niclas Ericson said.
“There was a lot of other reasons such as production constraints and other issues such as space.”
The 3-D footage will be broadcast live to home viewers in 26 countries and at dedicated public events.
Home viewers pair the necessary 3-D television with so-called active shutter glasses, which are battery-powered and work by stopping the image to each eye alternately at a high rate.
The image quality is superior to that possible on cinema screens.
But an exhibition of both systems at Thursday’s announcement using action from last year’s Confederations Cup showed that the bigger cinema screen compensates for any lower quality.
There is little difference to traditional images in wide shots, but close-up images leap from the screen as players tussle for the ball or run toward camera.
Ericson said FIFA expects “a few hundred thousand” fans in total to watch games in 3-D.
Sony is filming the matches and said its technology, which was tested at last year’s eight-nation Confederations Cup in South Africa, was as important as the shift from black and white to colour.
FIFA has three broadcasters with dedicated 3-D channels, including ESPN, and may announce more before the June 11-July 11 tournament.
FIFA expects Japan at least to join Spain, Britain and the United States in having one before the tournament starts.
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