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Hitwise Intelligence - Alan Long - Asia Pacific

Analyst Weblog

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East Asian Games generating interest

November 20, 2009

The 5th East Asian Games on 5 December is for the first time being staged in Hong Kong. This is the first time Hong Kong plays host to a large-scale multi-sport international event.

The East Asian Games brings together 2,300 athletes from 8 countries and territories competing in 22 sports including Badminton, Basketball, Football, Judo, Rowing, Tennis and Wushu

The last major sporting event staged in Hong Kong was the Equestrian event as part of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. To provide an indication of the interest in the East Asian Games, the chart below tracks the share of visits by all Hong Kong Internet users to the official website (http://www.2009eastasiangames.hk) compared with the Beijing Olympics website at the same time leading up to the respective official opening days.

Click to view larger chart

· 60 days prior to the opening day of the East Asian Games interest was relatively low compared to the hype and build up that surrounded the Beijing Olympics, receiving only 42% of the share of visits that Olympics website received.

· The interest in the East Asian Games has started to climb and reached parity in terms of share of visits with the Olympics Games website 27 days preceding the opening.

· Share of visits peaked 19 days prior to the east Asian Games commencing;the share of visits was 34.5% higher than the Olympics on the corresponding day.

The growth in share of visits is a positive indicator that Hong Kong Internet users are increasingly interested in the East Asian Games as it nears the opening date.

The key drivers of visits to the East Asian Games website were Search Engines, Social Networking and Forums, Government (HK SAR) and Portal Frontpages industries. During the week ending 7 November 2009, Search Engines were responsible for 21.1% of upstream visits, followed by Social Networking and Forums with 16.1%.

Government websites (8.6%) and Portal Frontpages (8.2%) were also important sources of traffic. As the opening of the Games draws closer News and Media – Print should become more prominent as a driver of visits to the official website, currently responsible for only 1.5% of upstream traffic.

Social Networking and Forums websites, primarily Facebook will play an important role over the coming weeks in driving traffic., Facebook was the number one website in Hong Kong accounting for 13.0% share of all visits during the week ending 7 November 2009 by Hong Kong Internet users.

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In Categories Government | Hong Kong | Olympics | Social Media