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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - UK

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Fantasy Football Sites Gain in Advance of New Season Kick-Off

August 07, 2006

With the World Cup barely behind us, UK consumers are already preparing for the start of the Premiership League due to begin in less than two weeks. Sunday, Chelsea and Liverpool will compete for the Community Shield, kicking off the 2006 season. Last week, searches soared for tickets to the game and fantasy football sites proved popular as punters anticipated the season's start.

Share of UK searches for "community shield tickets" more than doubled last week. The term ranked #21 among search terms that include the keyword "tickets" in the past four weeks. The term "football tickets" ranked #13.

Share of searches for "fantasy football" increased 21% last week, and the term became the #3 search term to include the keyword "football" after only "bbc football" and "football". Searches for "liverpool football" and "chelsea football" also increased, by 9% and 22% respectively in the past week.

The big winners of all the pre-season hype are fantasy football sites, in particular Metro, The Sun and Telegraph. The following table shows the top 10 Sports - Fantasy sites based on share of UK Visits. The Telegraph, Sun and Metro fantasy football sites were all fast movers last week. The share of UK visits to Telegraph Fantasy Football increased 56% last week, visits to the Sun Fantasy Football site were up almost 3.5 times and visits to the Metro Fantasy Football site were up more than 6.5 times. Metro Fantasy Football's ranking in the Sports - Fantasy category increased from 36 the week ending 27th July 2006 to 7th last week.
Fantasy Football Top 10.png

I looked at Hitwise data and found that the Metro Fantasy Football site's growth is due to an email campaign, visits from the Metro, and likely also offline promotion. The top downstream site from the Metro was Metro Fantasy Football with more than a third (37%) of the Metro's visits going to the Fantasy Football site. There is a prominent link on the Metro homepage to fantasy football. Last week, Email Services accounted for 4% of its upstream visits to the Metro and 12% for Metro Fantasy Football (compared to about 4% on average for News and Media sites). High profile promotions in the newspaper are also likely another factor driving visits to the site, with searches for "metro fantasy football" spiking up last week.

The Telegraph Fantasy Football site received 58% of its visits from the Telegraph last week, and with the deadline approaching to select a team by 19th August, visits will no doubt continue to climb to the site. Searches for "telegraph fantasy football" increased 24% last week and the term ranked 9th among search terms containing the keyword "football" in the past four weeks.

Fantasy football offerings can be a great way for news and media sites to boost visits. The Telegraph, The Sun and Metro have all seen visits to the main site increase along with visits to the Fantasy Football sites. Fantasy football is a competitive area these days, and with attractive offers for free play with lots of prizes, it will be interesting to watch this space in the lead up to the season start.

Posted by Heather Hopkins at 03:41 PM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Sports