Traffic figures for English websites are dropping during the country's World Cup fixtures, as fans abandon the internet in favour of their TVs.
According to stats from Adtech, traffic drops by 20% during England fixtures, while for other teams, traffic drops are less significant. This trend is expected to continue around today's game, and to intensify if they manage to get through to the knockout stages.
An hour before the two previous England games, visitor numbers to UK websites dropped by 10%. Once the matches got underway, Adtech's servers recorded just 80% of the usual ad impressions.
For the Slovenia game today, a decline in performance by up to 30% is expected. However, as soon as the England matches are over, delivery performance for banner ads rises by up to 10% above normal traffic for the next hour.
Other World Cup online stats, thanks to Hitwise:
- 1 in every 88 Internet searches in the UK was World cup related last week. The biggest beneficiary of this search traffic was Fifa.com, which was , the 71st most visited website in the UK, and the fourth most popular sports website.
- Thanks to some ambush marketing, and FIFA's reaction to it, the Dutch lager Bavaria was the fifth most visited beer website in the UK on the next day (June 15).
- During the week ending June 19 there were five times as many searches for ‘vuvuzela’ than for ‘wayne rooney’, the England team’s most searched for player.
Graham Charlton is Editor at Econsultancy. Follow him on Twitter or connect via Linkedin or Google+.
9:29AM on 24th June 2010
good stats Graham!!! Doesn't suprise me one bit traffic is down before and during England matches! The whole office downed tools and watched the Slovenia game yesterday so we played our part. Wonder if performance will decline to 40% of the usual for the Germany game!
Online marketing manager at Glide Technologies
9:36AM on 24th June 2010
Not surpised by these stats Graham. We carried out some of our own world cup research into how workplaces were helping their workforce catch the games which were on during office hours and the UK came out top when we asked if the games would be shown in the office.
CEO at SciVisum.co.uk
6:09PM on 24th June 2010
despite all talk of TV/PC convergence - you can't beat a big screen to watch a big sporting event!
What Tom said - not surprising that Internet traffic is down when so many watch England on TV.
I'd assume radio listeners drop too (unless they are carrying the game commentary).