World Cup football is not only a good time for commerce, business and media, but for religious organisations as well.

Keeping in view the immense interest among the people in the Middle East about the World Cup even after the elimination of 'Arab teams' like Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, a Christian Satellite Network is broadcasting a series of programmes about male and female "Christian sports heroes".

The SAT-7 network, which provides programmes to Middle East and North Africa, recognised that many of its viewers would be focusing attention on the World Cup and prepared a number of sports programmes that will air for a full month, the Christian Newswire reported.

"We wanted to connect to the excitement of the World Cup by broadcasting programmes that show what Christ has meant in the lives of some famous soccer players and athletes," a spokesman of the network said.

A group of Dutch Catholic and Protestant teachers, meanwhile, opened an online poll to select the favourite Christian soccer star. In Germany [Images], many churches are showing the World Cup games on large screens and preachers are using soccer themes in their sermons, in an apparent attempt to communicate with more people and that too, more effectively.

Special prayers for World Cup are also a common practice. The Church of England [Images] released a prayer ahead of the tournament for the fans to access on their website and it proved to be a huge hit.