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FA Cup Final Tickets Searches Spike ahead of Champions League
May 02, 2006
The FA Cup Final has proved to be wildly popular online. Last week's victory by West Ham United lead to a surge in visits to the team's site. The site's market share of UK visits more than doubled and the site's ranking jumped from 25th among Sports - Football sites to 6th.
The share of UK internet searches for "fa final cup tickets" was seven times higher than the share of searches for "champions league final tickets", indicating that the FA Cup Final is proving more popular than the Champions League Final among UK internet users. The FA Cup Final's popularity was almost on par with that of the Champions League last year. This year, the share of searches for "fa cup final tickets" was almost three times higher than the peak from 2005, as illustrated by the chart below.
If you have any suggestions on why online interest for the FA Cup Final is much higher than the Champions League Final - and so much higher than last year, please let me know. You can post comments on this blog or drop me a line with ideas.
One obvious reason is that this is the first chance for West Ham fans to see their team play in the FA Cup Final in 26 years. West Ham and Liverpool have been allocated 24,000 tickets each and West Ham has already posted a story on its website recognising that many loyal fans won't be able to secure tickets. The Times Online reported that tickets to the match were going for £800.
The top site receiving visits from "fa cup final tickets" in the past four weeks (as listed below) was Sold Out Event Tickets. The top term sending visits to the site in the past four weeks was "fa cup final tickets" accounting for 5% of the site's traffic. The site promotes itself as "Your Guaranteed Ticket Exchange: For Fans From Fans." However, fans may prove disappointed. When I was researching this post, the site didn't have any tickets available for the game.
Many of my colleagues have pointed out that the FA Cup features two UK teams while the Champions League features one UK team (versus Barcelona ). However, the same was true last year. Another possible reason is location with Paris trips more costly than those to Cardiff. However, last year's Champions League game took place in Istanbul and we saw a tremendous surge in searches for travel to Istanbul.
This raises another possible reason... location. Whilst searches for Cardiff related travel (including "cardiff hotels" and "hotels cardiff") surged last week, searches for Paris related travel remained flat (or down slightly) compared with previous weeks.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 04:47 AM
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Comments
If you look at Istanbul last season Liverpool would have sold the stadium out ourselves,The same applies to the F.A. cup final this season. There is no magic reason other than the best travelling fans in the world are in the final.
Posted by Tony, Widnes. | May 9, 2006 07:41 AM
One big reason is that West Ham and Liverpool are extremely well supported clubs. Liverpool might be more universally known, but West Ham's support is incredible for a club that has not won as many honours as others.
West Ham have large support around the world - I live in Australia and I know this for a fact. Both FA Cup finalists this year could have sold out the stadium themselves, twice over.
Posted by Peter | May 10, 2006 12:11 AM
The two commom factors for both occasions are that Liverpool FC are involved.Its as simple as that.
Posted by Chris | May 11, 2006 01:22 AM
I would have thought that Arsenal are as well supported as West Ham, if not better.
I would tend to agree that Liverpool is the dominant factor here.
It would be very interesting to see a Hitwise comparison with last years search stats.
Posted by Adam C | May 11, 2006 01:48 AM
Adam, Thanks for your comment. The chart above shows searches for tickets to both games on a weekly basis - allowing for year on year comparisons of searches for tickets to both games. If you're interested in searches for something else (i.e. the teams) - let me know.
Posted by Heather Hopkins | May 11, 2006 02:15 AM
It's nothing to do with Liverpool being in the final. For evidence of that, have a look at the relative prices of tickets in the Liverpool end and tickets in the West Ham end - if this was Liverpool supporters, their tickets would be more expensive.
The reason this interest has occurred is because West Ham are in the final for the first time in years and most of their supporters are not anticipating getting there again anytime soon. I am a West Ham supporter (as you may have guessed) and the demand for tickets is incredible, I really haven't seen anything like it - reason being that the club haven't won anything in years and has a huge fanbase. So have Liverpool of course - the difference is Liverpool are always getting to finals. West Ham are not.
Posted by Terry Doyle | May 11, 2006 03:08 AM
Heather - thanks for pointing that out - I should have looked more closely!
Ironically, I first found this post via a Google search for FA Cup Final tickets - rather than via my RSS feeds.
Having just got back from Cardiff for the final, I could back up the West Ham interest angle that Terry put forward. I would suspect that there were just as many (ticketless) West Ham fans as Liverpool fans there.
Posted by Adam C | May 14, 2006 11:28 PM
There is one reason for this and that is, Liverpool are involved.
Posted by George | May 9, 2006 12:50 AM