Olympic Web sites just the ticket - News

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Olympic Web sites just the ticket

October 13, 2000
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/soa/Olympic-Web-sites-just-the-ticket-/0,139023165,120105848,00.htm

With the Sydney 2000 Olympics on the home straight, there is no sign that support for the Games is waning. Fans worldwide have not only taken to the stands, but are gathering momentum on the Net as they cheer the Games all the way to the finishing line.

International site nbcolympics.com is in the spotlight as the global surfing top spot for Olympic-related information, according to the latest Nielsen/NetRatings Web Olympics Index.

nbcolympics.com has generated 3.2 million page views over the last 24 hours and racked up 50 million in total. The site has a significant 30-percent lead on the official Games Web site, olympics.com, which maintains second place and 38 million page views to date.

olympics.com averages 1.5 million page views per day, an increase of more than 650 percent compared to pre-Olympics viewing of about 200,000 pages per day.

smh.com.au/olympics - the Olympic site from f2 - recorded its highest traffic on the day gold-medal diva Cathy Freeman won the 400-metre race.

The site recorded 1.6 million page views for the day, clocking up 100,000 during the very hour of Freeman's victory.

"Our Olympics site is one of the biggest local sites in Australia. We wanted to build a site that was fast, easy to navigate and populated with the best content available. This level of traffic proves we have achieved those goals," f2 CEO Nigel Dews said.

In true Olympic spirit, fans have flocked to IBM's FanMail Web site, www.ibm.com/fanmail, to send messages of support to athletes.

The FanMail site has risen in the ranks of Hitwise's global classification, placed at 340 the week ending September 23, compared to 3145 previously.

As of last night, IBM confirmed that 340,000 messages have been relayed to athletes, sent by fans from 198 different countries.

An average of 12,000 messages are delivered daily, with swimming supremo Ian Thorpe receiving the most mail from fans - 16,000 at last count.

"The athletes love it," IBM's manager of worldwide Olympic marketing, Al Dell'Aglio told ZDNet Australia. "If you're no Ian Thorpe, a lesser known athlete, it's a real moral booster."

Thorpe's Telstra-sponsored Web site, www.ianthorpe.telstra.com.au, has been a forerunner in the popularity stakes during the Games and moved to be placed 675 in the Hitwise rankings the week ending September 23. The site was ranked 2,247 the previous week.

Also attracting surges in traffic from Australian audiences were Silver medallist in the women's Olympic pole-vault competition, Tatiana Grigorieva's site - www.tatiana.com.au - and the Australian Womens Hockey team site.

Grigorieva's Web site moved up more than 7000 places in the Hitwise rankings for Australian sites to be ranked 43rd on September 28.

Meanwhile, www.hockey.org.au peaked September 24 with a 533 percent increase on pre-Games traffic.

"Australians have really, really backed their athletes," Dell'Aglio said. "They've not only cheered in the Stadium but have cheered and boosted moral electronically," he added.