(31 May 2006 2:00 pm)

MUMBAI: The football Fifa fever is growing in leaps and bounds globally! comScore has announced the results of an analysis of
the worldwide online audience for the official World Cup soccer tournament Web site hosted by Yahoo! at fifaworldcup.yahoo.com. Yahoo! is a Fifa partner.

Last month, comScore Networks, which deals with digital media measurement, recorded 5.7 million unique visitors to the site, up 35 per cent from 4.2 million in March. The tournament is set to start from 9 June in Germany.

comScore says that the figures demonstrate the worldwide popularity of the World Cup and the potential of the Internet as a powerful marketing channel to reach this global audience.

Europe contributed the greatest proportion of visitors with 51 per cent, or almost 3 million people visiting the site from European countries. The next highest region was Asia Pacific, contributing 17 per cent of the total visitors (nearly one million people) and reflecting the strength of the sport in the area.

Traffic from Latin America represented 12 per cent of the total, with the popularity of the sport offsetting the lower internet penetration in many of the region's countries. Only 10 per cent of the visitors came from North America, highlighting the still limited popularity of professional soccer in the US.

The global interest in the World Cup, along with the complex marketing opportunities associated with the tournament, were emphasised by the visitation to the local language World Cup sites created by Yahoo!. In addition to the English language site, the German, Spanish, Japanese, French, Portuguese and Italian language versions all received significant traffic during April.