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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

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Rugby succcess boosts sports retail

October 08, 2007

The Rugby World Cup has managed to knock football off the back pages a few times over the last month, particularly this weekend. Unsurprisingly, searches for ‘rugby’ have increased by 250% since the beginning of September, with specialist rugby sites and news sites benefiting most from this increase in traffic.

Last year Bill did some analysis on the impact of the Tour de France on bike sales in the US, and he found that brands which featured prominently on the Tour benefited from the association. Taking a similar approach, I found that the Rugby World Cup has had a positive impact on the number of searches for related merchandise.

Rugby searches.png

This increase in searches has fed through to the retailers: for example, the top two sites receiving traffic from the term 'rugby balls' last week were Rugbystore.co.uk and the Nike Store. Indeed, it seems that the Rugby World Cup has given a boost to sporting retailers overall, with traffic to the category up on last year by between 5% and 10% each week over the last month. It seems that England fans aren’t the only ones celebrating after the weekend’s action – sports retailers in the UK should keep their fingers crossed for more good news from France on Saturday.

Traffic to sports retailers.png