Commentary

Just An Online Minute... World Cup Madness Online

  • by July 3, 2006

Okay, so it's almost over--the World Cup, that is.

The Cup has been astoundingly popular in the U.S. Have you noticed how many bars in New York and elsewhere advertised Cup gatherings on sidewalk chalkboards? Too, fans host parties at home and at work, and PCs have been tuned to all kinds of coverage--live streams of the games, news reports, and blog coverage.

Meanwhile, as the Cup winds down, Hitwise reports that the Yahoo FIFA World Cup Web site received more visits than the official site for major league baseball! Yes, that's right, the FIFA World Cup site on Yahoo was the fifth most visited Web site in the Sports category for the week ending June 24, 2006, accounting for 4.1 percent of U.S. category visits.

For that week, Hitwise reports that the Yahoo FIFA World Cup site ranked No. 68 overall among the more than 500,000 U.S. sites it tracks. In fact, visits to the site surpassed the MLB site, Yahoo! Sports MLB, on June 22, the day of the U.S.-Ghana match that dashed the U.S. team's hopes of advancing in the tournament.

Some additional highlights from Hitwise:

  • The amount of time a visitor stayed at the Yahoo FIFA World Cup site was 10 minutes and 8 seconds for the week ending June 24, 29 percent longer than the average session time for a sports Web site, at 7 minutes 52 seconds.

  • The most popular site visited after the Yahoo FIFA World Cup site for the week ending June 24 was McDonald's/FIFA World Cup Fantasy Game, which accounted for 8.8 percent of downstream visits.

  • The ESPN Soccernet and Fox Sports Soccer sites achieved respective ranks of 14 and 17 in the sports category for the week ending June 24. ESPN Soccernet accounted for 1.1 percent of category visits, while Fox Sports Soccer accounted for 1.0 percent in that week.

    Separately, Hitwise found that visitors to the FIFA site were predominantly from urban areas, according to Hitwise Lifestyle data based on Claritas PRIZM NE Segmentation. For the four weeks ending June 24, 32 percent of visitors to the FIFA site were from one of the three urban PRIZMNE social groups.

  • Urban Uptown, the most affluent urban social group, comprised 16.5 percent of FIFA World Cup visitors in that period.

  • Urban Cores, comprised of the lowest income urban residents, accounted for 8.8 percent of visitors to the Yahoo FIFA World Cup site, but accounted for only 4.0 percent of total Internet users.

  • Midtown Mix, the middle-income urban PRIZMNE social group, comprised 7.4 percent of visitors to FIFA World Cup, but accounted for only 5.4 percent of total Internet users.

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