THE World Cup in Brazil was eight months away when a small group of ESPN marketers gathered last October to decide how to promote Ian Darke, the media giant’s lead announcer for the event.

Mr. Darke is an excitable, chubby-cheeked personality from Portsmouth, England, who endeared himself to American soccer fans four years ago during the last World Cup in South Africa with his call of Landon Donovan’s goal that led the United States over Algeria, 1-0, in their final group-stage game. “Go, go, U.S.A.!” he said. “Oh, it’s incredible. You could not write a script like this.”

Brendan Gillen, an ESPN marketing manager, said, “We were just thinking of ideas to celebrate Ian and to bring him to an audience beyond core soccer fans.”

The World Cup is a monthlong, 64-game exercise in soccer immersion that has been an increasingly prized property at ESPN since the 1980s, a period that has paralleled the growth of soccer’s popularity in the United States. But this year will be ESPN’s last World Cup for a while; Fox has acquired the English-language rights in the United States to the next two, in 2018 and 2022.