Football Fever and the World Cup

With the advent of the FIFA World Cup, football-related websites are being swarmed with Hong Kong soccer fans, according to a new report from NetValue. Football fever is believed to have boosted traffic to sports sites to an all-time high of 478,800 unique visitors during the month of March 2002.

Compared to one year ago, visitors to soccer-related sites constitute 65 percent of the visitors to sports sectors. Fans now form more than three quarters of the unique visitors to the whole sector, representing 84 percent of total visitors to sports-related sites. 'In view of the popularity of soccer among the Hong Kong population, it is not unexpected that the number of visitors to soccer-related sites would soar due to the World Cup', said Dr Jack Loo, president of NetValue (Asia). 'Nevertheless, considering the extent that soccer fans lead the entire sports sector visitors during this period shows the distinctive appeal of the event.'

There are many online soccer sites that fans can patronise to satisfy their ardent interest such, as livescore.com and zoomsoccer.com. Other sites, such as liverpoolfc.tv and manutd.com, provide news on popular English Premiere League teams. However sites that provide wide coverage of World Cup are now ranking as top of surfers' list.

'Some of these websites have detailed information related to the World Cup, such as the match schedules, experts' opinions and profiles and pictures of their favourite soccer stars. Moreover, news at these sites is updated several times daily - making it the most convenient source for soccer information,' said Tony Tan, sales director of NetValue (Hong Kong). 'Presently, the top choices amongst the Hong Kong football fans are worldcuptimes.com and soccernet.com.'

In general, students and those aged 24 years old and below constitute the bulk of the visitors to soccer sites. Surprisingly, the gender differences among Hong Kong visitors to soccer sites are relatively modest, compared to some of its neighbouring countries also tracked by NetValue. In particular, 45 percent of the audience are female, while males make up the other 55 percent.

'In other Asian countries, such as Singapore and Taiwan, the male to female ratio is around 7 to 3', said Yong Soo Keong, NetValue's research consultant. 'But in Hong Kong, the proportions are somewhat more balanced during this period, possibly due to the World Cup phenomena that even captivates the female audience in Hong Kong.'

All articles 2006-22 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.

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