UK Internet Users Visiting More Sports Than Career Or Hobby Sites

Sports sites are now a more popular destination for UK internet users than auction, career or hobby sites. Figures collected over the past nine months by MMXI Europe show that reach in its sports category has grown considerably, from 1.6% in February to 9.9% in June.

“Football is an important part of our culture, and this is reflected in the web habits of the people on our panel.” said Lucy Green, marketing director of MMXI Europe. “The great attraction with the internet is that it not only gives people the ability to see results and watch games as they happen, but also provides an encyclopaedic source of information for true sports fans.”

The most popular site in the MMXI sports category of its At Home panel during June was Teamtalk.com, which received 174,000 unique visitors (1.6% digital media reach) out of a total for all sites of 10,613,000 . This football site includes news, betting facilities and e-commerce as well as individual sections for all clubs in the UK and Scottish Premierships.

Sports.com, a more wide ranging site covering sports including football, cricket, rugby, golf, tennis, motor racing and boxing was the second favourite UK online sports destination last month. The news, results and competitions, available in five European languages, attracted 162,000 visitors (1.5% reach) during June.

Wrestling site wwfkingofthering.com and the official Euro2000.org site also did well, although the total visitor total for all sites in the sports category- 1,052,000 unique users or 9.9%- is still some way off the top ten sites for UK users. The reach even for No. 10 in the chart, demon.net is 14.7%. This site alone attracted 1,564,000 visitors during June, while the most popular site, MSN.com had 3,863,000 visitors, representing a reach of 36.4%.

MMXI Europe: www.mmxieurope.com