The popularity of online sports and gambling sites has risen by almost 50% during the last six weeks, on the back of the World Cup, according to new research.
Internet research firm Nielsen//NetRatings said that the tournament has resulted in a 30% rise in the weekly numbers of UK fans visiting sports and gambling websites.
Almost one in five people (2,881,000) online in the UK during the second week of the finals visited a sports or gambling website
Sports and gambling websites averaged a Unique Audience of 2.71 million in the first two weeks of the World Cup compared to 2.10 million in the four weeks preceding the World Cup.
Alex Burmaster, European Internet analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings said: “Over the last six weeks the online sports and gambling audience has increased by almost 50%, indicating what an integral companion the Internet now is to major football events in terms of both content and gambling.”
Interestingly, the gambling audience has a greater percentage of women (32%) than the sports audience (27%), the research revealed.
The sports and gambling audience has a much greater percentage of men (71%) than the Internet audience as a whole (53%)
The audience to sports and gambling websites for the World Cup in the UK is slightly older (24% under 25 years of age) than for the Internet as a whole (29% under 25)
Of the ten most popular sports / gambling sites, The Times Sport had the greatest proportion of women (46%) followed by William Hill with 34%.
The research indicated that gambling visitors average 43 minutes online during the week compared to 15 minutes for sports visitors. Men average 2.5 times longer on sports and gambling websites than women.
BBC Sport was again the most popular sports website, with 441,000 Unique Visitors – a 47% share of the sports and gambling audience. However, of the ten most popular sites William Hill was the “stickiest”- its average visitors viewing 22 pages
“Stickiest” sports and gambling websites on the day of England’s match against Sweden, according to Nielsen//Netratings
Rank |
Brand / Site |
Average Pages
per Person Tuesday 20th June |
Unique Audience (000’s)
Tuesday 20th June |
Rank by Unique Audience |
1 |
William Hill |
22 |
47 |
6 |
2 |
FIFA World Cup |
15 |
82 |
3 |
3 |
BBC Sport |
8 |
441 |
1 |
4 |
Sporting Life |
7 |
70 |
5 |
5 |
Football365 |
7 |
35 |
9 |
6 |
Premium TV* |
6 |
73 |
4 |
7 |
Premier League |
5 |
38 |
7 |
8 |
SkySports |
5 |
87 |
2 |
9 |
Sky Bet |
4 |
37 |
8 |
10 |
Yahoo! Sports |
2 |
34 |
10 |
E.g. 47,000 people visited William Hill on Tuesday 20th June, averaging 22 pages per person
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings NetView Custom Analytics, selected football and gambling websites including Internet applications
*Premium TV is a publisher of Premier League and Football League club websites
Source: Nielsen//Netratings
