FIFA site scores with record visitor numbers

FIFAworldcup.com, the official website of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, registered a record 79,654,871 million page views on June 3, representing a 133 per cent increase over the 34 million page views logged on May 31, the day of the opening match.

During the first four days of the World Cup, the site logged more than 165 million page views. By comparison, during the entire three-week 2000 Sydney Games, the official Olympic website recorded 230 million page views from September 13 to October 1, according to IBM’s website.

Of FIFAworldcup.com’s seven languages, more than half (52 per cent) of all page views were in English, while Japanese (13 per cent), Chinese (eight per cent) and Spanish (7.8 per cent) have averaged steady page view counts during the first four days of the competition.

The record number of visitors has exceeded expectations “by far”, says Charles-Henry Contamine, FIFA’s head of Internet. He claims it has reached “groundbreaking” dimensions.

With unprecedented traffic on the opening day, additional traffic-handling measures were added in response to the level of demand from around the world.

“For the first time in its history, FIFA is bringing the World Cup directly to the fans via the Internet, fulfilling a long-time demand,” says Contamine.

“Fans’ response to their experience on FIFAworldcup.com has been overwhelmingly positive,” he adds.

Produced and marketed by official partner Yahoo!, FIFAworldcup.com offers exclusive video highlights of 2002 FIFA World Cup matches, a Philips MatchCast real-time scoring application, breaking tournament news, World Cup trivia, interactive games and exclusive vintage footage.

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