The expected countdown has begun.
But unlike Nasa, which really only cranked up the drama of the countdown from 10 while launching the now apparently redundant shuttles, the Rugby World Cup 2011 countdown started at 100.
We are now at 31.
That's the days remaining until the first cash registers really ring in anger ... or pleasure more like.
Although, at 31 days out, the commercial benefits of what the RWC can unleash are already being mined.
Like the very game of rugby itself, the competition is healthy ... although in some sectors it is being tagged "unhealthy".
It's a thing parallel importing. It also goes under the name of entrepreneurial marketing or, basically, seeing and seizing the chance.
It seems a Kiwi-retailed version of the new All Blacks jersey costs double that of the price tag and shipping costs for the same RWC-sanctioned item in the US.
All to do with poverty-level wages paid in some parts I understand.
But that's something that will never go away and, sadly, economics rule our lives. If I see an item comparable to something I'm after, and at half the price, I'll generally buy it.
It's called budgetary awareness.
In the case of these flash new AB footy jerseys, there is definitely something wrong in the whole trading equation if you can buy the colours of your national rugby team for just $104 in the US of A (where rugby is a little way down the sporting food chain) as against $220 in a clothing store just up the road.
However, I wonder what the discounted price of the jersey will be if the All Blacks play like a cheaply-produced article and fail to finally give the country something to celebrate. Sort of like Christmas really.
In the lead-up to the great festive spending binge, the prices are premium ... but on Boxing Day the whistle sounds to kick off the big discount sales.
Same thing is happening on the general souvenir front with imported imitation Maori-aligned pendants and necklaces. A fraction of the price ... and someone is seriously coining it.
Simply the tip of an emerging RWC iceberg I suspect.
For there will be more to come.
But the most intriguing and arguably cleverest piece of RWC marketing (based around non-marketing) has been the lager brand associated with the All Blacks. I won't name it because it will probably see me put on the stand in a court in Holland and charged with treason by a certain brand over there which has the "beverage" rights to the event.
So anyway, this New Zealand lager crew hits the heart, and the memory, of the sporting drinker and creates a white can for its drop ... a can that had been in production when the Kiwis lifted the cup for the first and so far only time in 1987.
All about sentimentality and nostalgia ... two of the greatest marketing tools imaginable.
And they are getting away with it because I asked two people, who are not passionate about the RWC but obviously know it is happening, who the beer sponsor was?
Both gave the name of the Kiwi outfit.
Mission accomplished ... and watch for a repeat of the fancy dress spotted at the football World Cup - where a cluster of people dressed in the colours of a rival drink to that of the official sponsors.
The cameras panned and took in the sight ... the world saw it and whoever those people were probably got free drinks for life.
Plus a ban to enter every ground in the universe but what the heck. They had made a point.
It is sport, not commercialism.
Yes it costs money to put such things on, but when things start getting just a little too precious ... a little too IRB and not so much Kiwi basics ... then I say it's poor form.
Like taking in advertising signs from shops in "the zone".
So, where do I buy an Italian jersey ... like the white-canned beer I love an interloper ... an outsider.
Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.
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