Millions Tracking Euro 2004 on the Web

The Euro 2004 tournament, now approaching its knockout stage, is attracting record audiences to related Web sites, according to research from Nielsen//NetRatings.

Analysis of the total UK audience from the first week of the competition (see chart below) shows a Unique Audience of more than 900,000 people for BBC Sport, with the other four sites, including Yahoo! Sports and UEFA Euro 2004 attracting, on average, between 150,000 and 200,000 individuals. Sky Sports appears to keep viewers much longer than the other 4 sites - an average of 14 minutes in total.

During the past week more UK sports sites with Euro2004 content have appeared in the analysis. Three were generating significant traffic when the contest began in 12th June and six by the end of the week.

On Sunday 13th June, the day of England's opening game, traffic to Euro 2004 sites was lighter than the days preceding and following the game. However, traffic to news.bbc.co.uk/sports reached its week 1 peak on the day of England's second game, against Switzerland on Thursday 17th June.

According to Gabrielle Prior, European Data Analyst, '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. 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 online. For that game, the web sites that offered minute-by-minute analysis including BBC Sport and Sky Sports experienced the heaviest traffic'.

Day to day analysis of the audience in the UK compared to the overall European figures shows that so far, the heaviest Internet traffic to sports sites in general was midway through the first week on 14th June. This was the day after England's opening match with France, and the day that Italy and Denmark, Sweden and Bulgaria also competed for the first time. The audience peaked again on the day of the second England match against Switzerland.

Prior concludes 'At the beginning of this 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'.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

• All news