Fantasy sports sites a hit during FIFA World Cup

Hitwise Press Release

Fantasy sports websites a hit during FIFA World Cup

Auckland, June 21, 2006. According to Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service, Kiwi surfers are keen to take an online punt on their favorite football team. Sports – Fantasy websites accounted for 10% of visits to all Sports websites, for the week ending June 17, 2006. Soccer was the only sports category to receive more visits, with 20.6% share.

TVNZ Virtual Football (www.tvnzvirtualfootball.co.nz) which is a fantasy league for the 2006 World Cup has shot up in website rankings to account for 59.2% of traffic in the Sports – Fantasy category, week ending June 17, 2006. The Yahoo! FIFA World Cup Fantasy League (en.fifaworldcup.fantasysports.yahoo.com) accounted for 5.6% of visits, ranking second behind the TVNZ Virtual Football website,

Visits to the Sports – Soccer category were dominated by the official FIFA World Cup (_fifaworldcup.yahoo.com) website, which accounted for 22% of visits for the week ending June 17, 2006. The highest ranking local website was Soccer2 Draws and Results (portal.soccer2.org.nz) with 20.5% local market share, followed by Soccer Auckland (www.soccer2.org.nz) with 16.9% share.

Hitwise Search Intelligence indicate that there were 4,438 search terms to the Sports Fantasy and Soccer categories combined for the 24 weeks ending June 17, 2006. Search terms to drive significant traffic to both categories included, ‘soccer world cup’, ‘fantasy football’ and ‘fantasy premier league’.

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NZ Share of Visits to TVNZ Virtual Football in Sports - Fantasy

ENDS

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