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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

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Olympics winners: sports sites, bike retailers and sportswear manufacturers

August 29, 2008

Following the success of Team GB in Beijing, we were curious to see who else benefited from the Olympics hype. As the chart below illustrates, the most clear online winners were sports websites, both information and retail sites. UK Internet traffic to sites within our Sports category shot up to an all time high, and last week they accounted for one in every 29 visits. As we pointed out last week, the big winner was the BBC Sport website, which received one in every five visits to a Sport site during the Olympics.

UKInternet traffic to sports and sport retail websites following the olympics 2008 chart.png

While our Shopping and Classifieds – Sports and Fitness category received less visits than the overall sports category, it still reached a new peak during the Olympics and for the week ending August 23rd traffic was up 36% year-on-year. Looking at top sports retail websites last week, it is perhaps no surprise to see that four of the top 10 were cycling websites, including Halfords at number one. The success of Chris Hoy et al has obviously encouraged Brits to get in the saddle. As the chart below illustrates, each of the top 4 cycling sites experienced increases in traffic over the Olympic fortnight.

uk internet traffic to cycle bike stores following the 2008 olympics halfords wiggle chain reaction evans cycles chart.png

Another company that benefited from the team GB halo effect was Adidas, the official kit sponsor. As you can see from the chart below, last week searches for ‘adidas’ reached their highest level this year. For the 4 weeks ending August 23rd, almost 80% of this traffic went to Adidas’s own sites. The largest independent recipient of traffic was JD Sports, which received 5.7% of traffic from ‘adidas’ searches, although it paid for almost 90% of that traffic.

uk internet searches for adidas following team gb success at olympics 2008 chart.png

Two other sportswear manufacturers that also benefited by association were Puma and Speedo. Puma sponsor the fastest man in the world, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, and traffic to its site shot up thanks to its ">Race Bolt game. As you can see, the peak happened on August 20th, the day he won gold in the 200m sprint, breaking the world record in the process. The other big star of the games was the American swimmer Michael Phelps, who wore a much talked about Speedo swimming suit. However, unlike Puma which experienced a sudden peak, UK traffic to Speedo website in increased steadily over the Olympic fortnight as Phelps racked up one gold medal after another.

uk internet traffic to speedo puma running following olympics 2008 chart.png