Sports fans flocked to South African Internet sports sites during the cricket 20-20 championship and the Rugby World Cup last month, to satisfy their craving for news on the top sports events, says online analysis company Nielsen/Netratings.
The latest results from Neilsen/Netratings, on behalf of the Online Publishers Association, show that - on average - sports Web sites received 75 801 unique browsers (UB) each day during the seven-week Rugby World Cup.
However, the research shows the 20-20 Cricket World Cup tended to produce higher daily audiences online than the Rugby World Cup. For example, cricket match days averaged 62% more UBs (71 409) than rugby match days (44 174 UBs).
Neilsen/Netratings says the busiest week was the one in which SA won the Rugby World Cup - where the number of visitors peaked at 340 462.
The busiest individual day for sports sites was the day after the Springboks` semi-final victory against Argentina, where the daily audience peaked at 118 580 UBs. However, neither the day before, the day of, nor the day after SA`s victory in the final against England was among the 10 busiest days during the seven-week tournament.
Working fans
Jannie Momberg, editor of News24.com, says this is unsurprising, as rugby matches were played after hours, while cricket matches were often played during normal working hours.
"Most people still access the Internet from work and so they will try and keep track of scores there. However, cricket also lends itself to keeping an online track of the score. One wants to watch a whole rugby match of 90 minutes," he says.
Controversy is also a factor influencing online visitors who want to find out what is happening in their favourite sport, says Independent Online duty sports editor Kemantha Govender: "With rugby, anything about [Springbok coach] Jake White draws attention. Today, we have seen phenomenal response from the story over what White has said about Luke Watson," she says.
According to the Nielsen/Netratings research, News24 Sport was the most popular sports Web site during the Rugby World Cup, averaging 90 113 UBs per week - 30% of the average weekly visitors to all sport Web sites (297 824 UBs).
The research also points out that the 10 most popular sports sites during the tournaments contained only one dedicated cricket and one dedicated rugby site, but three dedicated soccer sites.
"Soccer also has its fluctuations. For instance, we saw a strong spike in hits during the whole SAFA (SA Football Association) debacle over the R70 million sponsorship issue," Govender says.
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