Regular visitors to this particular stretch of the blogosphere may remember my first ever comScore post, which charted the influx in traffic to MLS.com following the signing of David Beckham to the LA Galaxy…

A year on and online interest in the MLS remains strong, and I am pleased to say that the league became a comScore Media Metrix client in June 2008, in a month that saw the site rack up 394,000 U.S. and a total of 500,000 worldwide visitors.

Indeed, whether you want to attribute it directly to “the Beckham factor” or not (I, of course, am inclined to do so), U.S. interest in soccer is undoubtedly picking up, as this recent analysis of traffic to UEFA.com – the official website of the Union of European Football Associations and the tournament’s organizing body - during Euro2008 shows.

* Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

**Rankings based on the 16 individually reportable European countries in comScore World Metrix, + U.S. Total European Internet audience figures are comprehensive and include visitation from countries that are not individually reportable.

European traffic to UEFA.com grew 163 percent in June 2008 (Euro2008 was played between June 7 and June 29) to reach over 9 million unique visitors. Outside of Europe, the tournament also generated great interest online, with unique visitor numbers increasing 223 percent to 8.5 million.

However the most fascinating finding is that during the month in which the tournament was played, U.S. traffic to UEFA.com increased more dramatically than any of the European countries analysed (277 percent), growing at a faster month on month rate than World Cup winners Italy (253) percent, and tournament hosts Austria (226 percent) and Switzerland (198 percent). This highlights the increasing popularity of the sport in the U.S. If the sky was crying when Bex left the U.K., it is certainly looking rosier over U.S. soccer fields these days…