Traffic jam as football fans rush to websites

IAIN McGREGOR

LOOKING FOR THE NET: Interest in the World Cup has seen soaring internet traffic on some websites.

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Online interest in the Fifa Football World Cup has seen some of the nation's busiest sites score big traffic numbers.

TVNZ leveraged its free-to-air rights to the games by streaming football matches live on its site and providing on-demand content for catch-up viewing.

Up until after the first semifinal between the Netherlands and Uruguay, there had been 155,298 total stream views of World Cup games and highlights, according to Nielsen.

Of these, 95,597 were views of the whole game unedited, including live streams and catch-up watching.

Edited games and highlights packages made up 59,701 of total stream views.

Catch-up on-demand viewings of the All Whites' games started high at 13,668 for the Slovakia game, but tapered off to 3530 for the final game against Paraguay.

Fairfax news website stuff.co.nz consistently broke through the 100,000 unique browsers [UB] barrier on the All Whites' game days.

Nielsen figures show 141,066 UBs visited stuff's Football World Cup section on June 21, the day the All Whites secured an historic draw against former world champions Italy. Page impressions on the section also jumped to 884,973 that day.

The TAB says it has seen 30,000 new accounts opened since the World Cup tournament began.

Unique visitors to the tab.co.nz site were four times higher than the same days last year, according to the New Zealand Racing Board.

At the peak of the pool play during the last week of June the TAB site had 94,387 unique visitors, generating 1.7 million page views, compared with 52,536 unique visitors for the same week a year ago.

"One of the key contributors to site visits has been the fact we take live betting during the match," says the TAB's automated channels manager, Neil O'Styke. "Customers' eyes are obviously swapping between their TV and computer screens to follow the action and its impact on our prices.

"It's no longer just about who wins and loses, but options like the way the first goal will be scored, the time of the first goal, and [picking] the exact score have captured people's interest."

- © Fairfax NZ News