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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK
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Ukraine vs. England: a success for online video and Bet365
October 12, 2009
By most accounts, the screening of the Ukraine vs. England football match online was a success. The live video stream picked up an estimated audience of half a million and there were few technical complaints. The website that screened the match, UkrainevEngland.com, ranked first in our Football category on match day (Saturday October 10th), while it was also fifth amongst all Sports sites and 124th overall. As the chart below illustrates, all of this activity meant that UK Internet traffic to our custom category of video websites reached its highest level this year on Saturday.
Looking at the clickstream for UkrainevEngland.com on Saturday reveals some interesting things. The downstream data shows that 18.3% of people leaving the site went to one of a number of video or P2P sites that, it’s probably fair to say, were hosting illegal streams of the match (or at least that’s what their visitor assumed). However, these sites also accounted for 23.2% of upstream traffic to the site, meaning that they sent more traffic to UkrainevEngland.com than they received from it. To me this implies many people were unsuccessful in their hunt for a free stream, so instead opted for the legal, paid-for option – a positive sign for those looking to charge for online content.
Another quirk revealed in the clickstream data is that a number of people visited broadband speed checker sites after UkrainevEngland.com, presumably to ensure that their connection was up to scratch before shelling out the cash. Searches for the term ‘broadband speed test’, which is already the most searched for variation on the keyword ‘broadband’ in the UK, increased by 5% last week.
The final beneficiary on Saturday was Bet365, which showed the game free to customers with a funded betting account. It was the biggest recipient of downstream traffic from UkrainevEngland.com, picking up 15.6% of visitors that left the site. This led to a surge in traffic to Bet365. As the chart below illustrates, it moved to second position in our Gambling category on Saturday, despite ranking fourth for fifth for the month up until then.
Posted by Robin Goad at 11:00 AM
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In Categories Football | Gambling | Search | Sport | TV | Video
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It would be really interesting to know how many people could access this stream. By my reckoning it would be less than half the country, ie just the ones close to exchanges or on cable broadband. Also it was an unimportant game, which was a fair enough sort of test for toe in the water. The fact remains that not many of 'digitalbritain' would be able to stream a live game successfully. We see the future, but it ain't here yet. We need fibre to the home, in order to do what the other more advanced countries will be able to do. I realise a football game is hardly in the class of 'important' but the data transfer involved shows the infrastructure couldn't cope with EGov and healthcare if a big game was on. ie a really big game. or the olympics?
Posted by cyberdoyle | October 12, 2009 01:21 PM