Euro 2008 breaks online traffic record

by John Reynolds, Media Week 23-Jun-08, 10:50

LONDON - The official website of the UEFA Euro 2008 football championships has more than doubled traffic levels from the previous competition, registering more than one billion page views already, according to the company running the website.

UEFA Media Technologies, the subsidiary in charge of production, said, since its launch in February, euro2008.com has broken all previous records for the competition, with 42 million people from more than 200 countries visiting the site in June.

The top two countries providing the most visitors have so far been the U K (15%) and the US (8%), despite neither nation having a national team at the tournament.

Of the other popular countries, Germany provided 8% of the traffic, Canada 5% and Finland 4%, followed by Italy, Spain, France, Turkey and Switzerland, who all total around 3% or less of the total visitors.

This year marks the first time that the official Euro website has offered video coverage in three different ways - live match simulcast in collaboration with UEFA broadcasting partners; video-on-demand offering individual matches, and highlights, and free videos produced as vodcasts shown twice a day, with news interviews and reports direct from the streets of Austria and Switzerland.