World Cup Kick Off Drives Millions to FIFA.com
With World Cup play well underway, fans across the globe are paying close attention to their national teams and watching highly-anticipated matches between the best squads in the world. On Friday, June 11, the official opening day of the World Cup, global Internet penetration of FIFA.com reached its highest level thus far, with 7.6 million unique visitors, or 1.2% of the global Internet audience, visiting the site as fans checked out the schedules of the early round matches.
Geographical differences in visitation to FIFA.com suggest varying levels of interest in the World Cup depending on one’s corner of the globe. The Middle East-Africa (2.5% penetration) and Latin America (2.3% penetration) exhibited the highest relative visitation to FIFA.com, well outpacing the global average of 1.2%. Europe followed with 1.3% penetration, while North America (1.0% penetration) and Asia Pacific (0.5% penetration) ranked below the global average. In absolute terms, Europe accounted for the greatest number of FIFA.com visitors on opening day at 2.6 million.
One of the highest profile matches of opening weekend was the USA vs. England game, which ended in a draw (to the dismay of many England fans). However, both nations had their heaviest visitation to FIFA.com on the opening day of the tournament, which was a Friday workday, one day prior to their actual game, which was played on Saturday June 12. Although the U.S. had more absolute traffic to the site with 1.3 million visitors on June 11, (0.9% of total Internet audience), the U.K. showed higher site reach at 2.1%, or about 538,000 visitors.
As teams face elimination and matches continue to intensify, we expect to see regional and country-specific visitation to FIFA.com to reflect the success of local teams. For continued coverage of Internet trends throughout the 2010 World Cup, visit the Comscore Voices blog or @comscore for additional updates!