Football Fans Flock To Websites
UK visitors to sports and gambling websites peaked during the second half of Thursday’s big match between England and Paraguay, with 230,000 people visiting them between 6pm and 7pm, according to research from Nielsen//NetRatings.
As was the case the day of the England v Paraguay game, one in ten people online last Thursday visited a sports or gambling website, and these sites saw a 40% overall increase in visitors compared to the average Thursday traffic.
Alex Burmaster, european internet analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings, said: “The difference in peak online sports times in relation to England kick-off times varies immensely between weekday and weekend matches. The Paraguay game was on a Saturday and we saw a peak audience five hours before kick-off as fans went online for news early before going off to watch the action.
“However, the Trinidad game was at five pm on Thursday when many people were still at work and the peak in audience occurred during the second half. We suspect this was due to the fact that some companies did not allow their workforce to leave early and there was much publicity about people not being allowed to access England games whilst at work, therefore, at six pm and with not enough time to get home or pubs being too busy, thousands of fans turned to the internet to follow the game in the second half or to place a bet on the outcome. This again highlights how key the internet has become for many people when it comes to following sports events.”
BBC Sport was again the most popular sports website on Thursday, with 449,000 unique visitors, a decrease from England’s first match against Paraguay, while the most popular gambling website was William Hill with 54,000 unique visitors, an increase over England’s first game. Nielsen//NetRatings believes this suggests that during a workday the internet is a more feasible option for betting than the high-street.
Visitors to Bet365 averaged 29 minutes on the site on Thursday, over three times as long as the second ‘stickiest’ site, BBC Sport, while sports fans averaged eight minutes online compared to 13 minutes for gambling fans.
Burmaster added: “Whilst sports sites were four times as popular as gambling websites during the day of the England match against Trinidad and Tobago, visitors to the latter spend over one and a half times longer, showing that gambling on sport online is a significantly more compelling activity than actually following it or reading about it online!
“As England has now qualified for the next phase we expect to see an increase in all online sports and gambling visitors if captain David Beckham’s prediction is correct that England’s performances will improve as they hopefully progress through the knockout stages successfully.”
Nielsen//NetRatings: www.netratings.com