- 2008年8月15日

Euro2008 Sends Flood of Traffic to UEFA.com (Union of European Football Associations’ site) - and the U.S. gets more excited than anyone…

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 MMX 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.

Total Unique Visitors (000)* to Uefa.com
Age 15+, Home & Work Locations
May – June 2008
Source: Comscore World Metrix

Country

May-08

Jun-08

% Change

Europe

3,458

9,102

163

Outside Europe

2,639

8,536

223

United States

274

1,032

277

Italy

213

751

253

Austria

61

200

226

Germany

604

1893

214

Switzerland

105

314

198

Netherlands

159

443

178

Portugal

77

208

171

Belgium

73

197

170

Spain

135

326

141

Norway

18

44

140

France

275

627

128

United Kingdom

697

1383

98

Ireland

30

52

75

Sweden

48

82

69

Denmark

37

57

55

Russian Federation

267

367

37

Finland

N/A

78

N/A

* 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…

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