The World Cup is over. Cue now a series of stories about how and why Americans hate soccer, and then another series of stories about how and why the tournament was a success in the U.S. and will
continue to grow for years to come. One thing is indisputable, however: this year's soccer World Cup was a success online. According to Hitwise, FIFA's World Cup site ranked 68th out of 500,000 Web
sites tracked by the traffic measurement firm for the week ending June 24th, when the U.S. played its final match against Ghana. By contrast, NBC's 2006 Winter Olympics site, which was considered a
great success for the broadcaster, peaked at 106. Many of the Yahoo-hosted World Cup site's visitors came from urban areas, suggesting a high number of immigrants and expatriates. Low and middle
income suburban Web surfers accounted for 16. 2 percent of all visitors to the site, while affluent urban Internet users accounted for 16.5 percent of U.S. visitors to the World Cup site--"a very
valuable segment to advertisers," said Hitwise senior analyst LeeAnn Prescott. Worldwide, FIFA's 2006 World Cup Web site crushed its performance at the last World Cup, surpassing its total of two
billion page views in the first two weeks. A couple of factors contributed to this: one, the earlier games were played in Korea and Japan during hours when most Americans were asleep; two, match
highlights were offered for free this time around, instead of for a fee, with better picture quality. The World Cup was also a traffic boost for the likes of the
New York Times, whose World Cup
blog was the second most trafficked page on the paper's site the day after the U.S.-Ghana match. One entry about the poor quality of ESPN and ABC's commentary generated over 230 comments.
Read the whole story at Forbes.com »