November 22, 2007

Child benefit chaos, football failure

Yesterday we left work wishing for two things: an English football victory; and that today would provide us with some interesting data about the impact of the Revenue and Customs child benefit crisis on the government and banking sectors. By now you probably know that our first wish wasn’t fulfilled, but you may be surprised to learn that our second one wasn’t really either. While there was a slight increase in traffic the HMRC website on Tuesday when the story broke, visits actually dropped yesterday, the first full day that people had to visit the site. We were also expecting to see an increase in traffic to banks as people rushed to check their accounts, but again the increases were only minor.

However, one sector that did see a noticeable increase in traffic was the credit reference agencies. www.creditexpert.co.uk (which is owned by Experian, Hitwise’s parent company) went from being the 718th most visited site in the UK on Tuesday, to 685th on Wednesday and the 370th yesterday, and other credit reference sites, including Equifax and Call Credit, also saw significant increases in their ranking. People are clearly following the advice to visit these sites, and also sharing this advice with their friends: 2 of the top 5 websites referring traffic to Credit Expert yesterday were Windows Live Mail and Yahoo! Europe Mail.

Back to the football, and there have already been claims that England’s exit from the European Championships will have a negative impact on the economy. Sports retailers in particular expecting to take a hit, and shares in the sector have declined. Umbro, which manufacturers the official England football kit, had already issued a statement to the market this morning before the FA had even confirmed Steve McClaren’s sacking as England manager.

We recently highlighted how online sports retailers received a boost from England’s success in the Rugby World Cup and, as the chart above illustrates, sports retail does receive a boost from major sporting tournaments. It’s also interesting to see that last week the sector benefited from the build up to last night’s game, and that Christmas is a traditional peak for the sector. It’ll be interesting to see whether a fall in demand for England (and other home nations) kits has an effect on Christmas trading, potentially putting a stop to the sector’s gradually rise over the last two years.

Posted by Robin Goad at 03:00 PM
Posted to Email | Financial Services | Government | Retail | Shopping and Classifieds | Sport

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