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2.5M UK FOOTBALL FANS GO ONLINE FOR WORLD CUP FEVER
More than 2.54m people in the UK visited gambling and sports websites in the last week, as the World Cup kicked off in Germany on Friday, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.
The Internet media and marketing research firm said that the particularly high total of 2.54m was attributable to huge interest in England's World Cup campaign, which began on Saturday with a 1-0 win against Paraguay.
The BBC's homepage proved to be the most popular sports website, attracting 1.3m unique visitors who averaged 21 minutes online.
The BBC figures were nearly four times higher than its nearest rival, Sky Sports, which had 369,000 visitors who spent an average of 13 minutes on its website.
Sports betting websites, were attracting lots of visitors with the top percentile attracting around 114,000 unique visitors.
Alex Burmaster, European analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings, said: "The millions visiting sports and gambling websites around the World Cup show what a vital part online plays in today's sporting events.
"It's interesting to note that the appetite for gambling is particularly strong -- these visitors averaging 39 minutes whereas those for sports news averaging only 16 minutes."
According to the Nielsen//NetRatings data, internet traffic was highest on Saturday, peaking at 1.1m. The company attributes this to football fans looking for post-match analysis of England's opening win.
Burmaster added: "Despite the fact that [Saturday] was the hottest day of the year, almost 1m sports fans visited a sports or gambling website on the day of England's opening game against Paraguay.
The top most visited website were as follows:
- BBC Sport - 1.34m
- Sky Sports - 369,000
- Premium TV - 320,000
- Fifa World Cup - 312,000
- Sporting Life - 157,000
- Yahoo! Sports - 147,000
