BUSINESS
Crowds flock to Euro 2004 Web sites
21-06-2004
by Craig Liddell
As football fans prepare for the do-or-die match between England and Croatia in Euro 2004, one analyst says visits to sports sites have been impressive.
After the first week of the UEFA Euro 2004 tournament, the latest research from Web measurement company, Nielsen//NetRatings, has revealed that more sports fans than ever before are logging on to the Internet for news, team updates and commentary.
"England's first game against France fell on a weekend, and so football fans were able to watch the game live on TV at home or in the pub," Gabrielle Prior, Nielsen//NetRatings European data analyst, explains. "However, we see a very different viewing pattern for the second game that took place on a working day. Clearly more people were getting their updates on-line. For that game, the Web sites that offered minute-by-minute analysis, including BBC Sport and Sky Sports, experienced the heaviest traffic."
Analysis of the total UK audience from the first week of the competition showed a unique audience of more than 900,000 people for BBC Sport, while the other four sites, including Yahoo Sports and UEFA Euro 2004, attracted between 150,000 and 200,000 individuals.
There are, however, real differences in the time spent. Sky Sports provided the stickiest content and kept its audience for an average of 14 minutes in total.
An interest in the tournament grew during the first week and the number of UK sports Web sites with Euro 2004 content appearing in the analysis each day has also increased. By the end of the week, there were six sites generating significant traffic, whereas on Saturday 12 June, when the contest began, only three Web sites appeared.
In 2002, the World Cup became one of the most popular on-line sports events in history, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Interest in the tournament continued despite some key countries being knocked out of the tournament.
The highest daily traffic to the official FIFA Web site to 25 June 2002 was just under 310,000 on 11 June, and there was another peak in interest when the quarter finals were played between South Korea versus Spain and Senegal versus Turkey, with traffic of 290,000 unique visitors.
"At the beginning of [the 2004] tournament, Nielsen//NetRatings predicted that an unprecedented 25 million Europeans would log on to view Euro 2004 related content in June and July, and so far, it would appear that we are well on the way to achieving that number," Prior concluded.
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