FIFA.com, the official website for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, reported huge traffic spikes on its website are tournament play reached the Final 16 stage. On June 23, FIFA.com delivered a total of more than 410 million page views. 126 million of them occurred shortly after the match between England and Slovenia ended between 5pm and 6pm local time in South Africa, when data requests from visitors reached more than one million a second.
The numbers were expected to increase even further over the weekend and as the tournament progresses.
FIFA.com estimates that the average internet user is now clocking up 55 minutes per day – that’s a combined 28.4 hours over the 31 days of the tournament — looking for World Cup news, statistics and video, and interacting with other fans on social networking sites such as Twitter.
A survey of European Internet users found that German fans spend the most time online, clocking up 76 minutes per day, followed by the Spanish (65 minutes) and the Swiss (61 minutes). UK-based fans average 44 minutes per day.
The survey of 5,000 people across Europe also revealed that, at the start of the tournament, over two-thirds of Europeans (71%) were planning to watch TV or go online to follow all key matches – whether involving their own team or not — while over one-quarter (27%, comprising 38% of men and 17% of women) were planning to watch at least half of all games, regardless of their own team’s success.
http://www.FIFA.com
