Americans flock to sports websites in August

Category: Sports and internet

October 3rd 08, 10:04

New figures from Nielsen Online have revealed that sports websites enjoyed a 26 per cent increase in US visitor numbers during August compared with the previous year.

The research company attributed this to the Beijing Olympics and the start of the American football season, with 42.3 million unique visitors heading to a sports website during the month.

According to the figures, the top online sports destination for Americans accessing the web from work was Yahoo! Sports, followed by ESPN and Fox Sports on MSN.

The growing popularity of fantasy sports also helped to push certain websites into the top ten, including the Fantasy Sports Ventures network.

"August was a busy month for online sports fans. The web offered 24/7 access to news, results and video, and fans demonstrated a healthy appetite for information about their favourite athletes and teams," remarked Jon Gibs, vice-president of media analytics at Nielsen Online.

NBC Universal recently released statistics showing that Americans consumed about 12 million hours of NBC content relating to the Olympics - including video streaming and other rich media - during the Games.

This news story was brought to you by Bluhalo, a leading UK digital agency.

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