France

L’Equipe Network, which includes websites owned by the well-known ‘L’Equipe’ daily newspaper, is the undisputed leader in the French sports sites rankings with a monthly Unique Audience of 2.7 million. It has double the reach of its nearest rival and also leads by sessions and time spent per person amongst the leading players.

Despite its strong performance in the sector, its popularity is significantly less than that of other top entertainment websites such as the TF1 Network and YouTube (with audiences of 10.3 million and 8.3 million, respectively), and major online retailers like Fnac.com (7.7 million) or La Redoute (6.4 million Unique Audience). However, L’Equipe Network has similar Unique Audience figures to other current events and global news websites such as LeMonde (2.9 million).

The nature of L’Equipe’s three most direct challengers shows the different types of sport publishing stakeholders in the sport market – from TV channels (Eurosport), to pure online players (Sports.fr Network), and telecoms portals (Orange Sports). Web 2.0 operators, such as Myfreesport, which enables visitors to join a virtual community while accessing multimedia and real-time sport news, and the sports offering from leading portal Yahoo! follow close behind.

Groupe Sporever, which publishes sport-specific webzines such as football365.fr, rugby365.fr, breaks into the Top10 due to its proactive strategy of launching specialized pages over the past two years, such as mercato365.com and assimilated sites). In 2007, the group also managed to acquire the broadcasting rights for England’s Premier League matches on the fixed and mobile Internet – a smart move considering the large numbers of French stars plying their trade in England. The group is also currently working on a TV-over-IP project with Orange Sports TV.

In fact, when looking at the top-ranked sports publishers, French sport fans appear to be particularly attracted to sites providing not only sports news but a multimedia approach to information. For example, Dailymotion holds both the 8th and 9th sports due to its dedicated channels (Extreme and Sport). However, the famous video broadcast platform is doing a better job of attracting visitors than keeping them on site for a long time – along with Myfreesport, their two sites have the lowest time per person.

The French Football Federation website finishes the Top 10, reinforcing the importance of football in French viewing habits; furthermore it is the only official soccer association to make the Top 10 amongst the European countries.

Italy

Over one in four Italians online visited a sports website in December 2007 – a two-percentage point increase on December 2006. Six of the Top 10 sites are general sports information sites. The most popular sports site (La Gazzetta dello Sport) comes from the most famous sports newspaper in Italy. The second most famous sports newspaper is Corriere dello Sport, which is the sixth most popular sports site.

Yahoo! Sport, then Virgilio Sport then MSN Sports International are the most visited sports channels from the large portals. The passion for football in Italy is shown by the fact that three of the top ten sports sites are specific football club sites – courtesy of the three main Italian football clubs: AC Milan, FC Internazionale Milano and Juventus Football Club. Compare this with England and Spain which only have one football clubs site in the Top 10 – Liverpool and Barcelona, respectively.

A single betting site occurs in the Top 10 – LiveScore at number eight – which is followed by Calciomercato.com which is a football news and information site. Not surprisingly, considering the plethora of football sites in the Top 10, the demographic profile of the sports audience leans towards men, who make up 70% of the audience. The sports category also ‘over-performs’ on attracting the 18-35 year old demographic – another big traditional audience for football.

Spain

In December 2007 more than 6.3 million Spaniards visited a sports website – one in every three Spaniards online. The audience was split 54% male and 46% female – far less male-orientated than Italy, for example, with 70% of the audience male. However, like Italy, the Spanish sports audience is heavily concentrated towards the 18 and 34 years old age group which accounts for 46% of the audience.

The three most popular sports sites remain Marca, AS and Zeta Sport Network – the top two somewhat correlated with traditional offline media. The content on the most popular sports sites tend to focus on the Spanish football league, results of the football league and then automobile coverage. The latter is pretty much down to the popularity of two-time Formula One world champion Fernando Alonso who drives for Renault. It will be interesting to see how tennis comes to the fore in 2008 based on the rising exploits of Mallorcan tennis star Rafael Nadal.

The other great celebrity in Spanish sports, is of course the rivalry between football clubs Real Madrid and Barcelona. Real Madrid wins the online battle with 361,000 Spanish visitors – the football club site is actually rolled-up into the traffic of the Terra Deportes Network – compared to Barcelona’s 210,000 visitors.

Australia

The Australian Sports category is very seasonal, as you can expect. December in Australia is summer but during the winter, from March through to September, the website of the Australian Football League is the top Australian Sports site. In the summer months, it drops in audience size but still remains amongst the most popular sites.

Fox Sports tends to be the highest property all year-round. Serving content and information on a wide variety of sports means it is able to maintain its audience size as the season’s change. NineMSN’s Wide World of Sport is another property which shares this trait, although it generally does not have as high an audience size as Fox Sports. However, ESPN and NineMSN’s Wide world of Sports are the most popular sports sites in December in Australia – both being general sports sites.

It’s worth mentioning other high ranking Winter sites that don’t perform too strongly in summer/December. These include the official website of the National Rugby League (NRL and other footy sites which are extremely popular in the winter but suffer a severe drop in audience during the summer. During these warmer months, the focus is on various summer sports properties. Cricket (for example, Baggy Green) and surfing and marine forecast (for example, Coastal watch), are also popular during this time.

Despite Australia being known for its sport-loving nation it’s interesting to note that amongst the countries covered in this report, Australia has the lowest reach of sports sites together with Italy – being visited by 27% of their domestic online population. This compares with 44% of Americans, 39% for the British and French, 33% of Spaniards and 32% of Germans.

In terms of demographics, like many other sports audiences around the world the sports category is largely frequented by men (62%), people between the ages of 35 and 49 (33%) and people on a high income (38% from households with an annual income of over AU$100k).

Germany

The leading sports sites in Germany are dominated by general-interest publishers. The four leading sites – T-Online Sport, Kicker, Sport1 and Ardsport – all cover a wide range of sports. Admittedly, the passion for football the Germans are famous for is well reflected in the fact that all of them have football featuring prominently on the landing page of the sports sections. The fifth most popular site is a pure football site, the official club website of Bayern Munich – in partnership with T-Online.

In terms of user engagement amongst the most popular sites, Kicker Online leads the way with almost 27 minutes per visitor during the month of December. Despite the fact it’s the most popular site, T-Online Sport performs the most poorly in terms of time with just over 9 minutes per visitor. It’s safe to say, however, that German sports sites in general have room for improvement in terms of keeping audiences on their sites. One site that does well in this regard is Transfermarkt – which relies heavily on input from its users.

In terms of the audience to the sports sector, Germany tends to be one of the markets most heavily orientated towards men who account for 68% of its audience. This figure is second, amongst the countries covered, only to Italy with a huge 70% of the sports audience being male. In Germany the 35-49 year old age group is the dominant one, accounting for over one-third (36%) of the audience.

USA

Not surprisingly the online US sports sector has one major difference from its European counterparts – the lack of soccer sites. The Top 10 sports sites contain six generalist sports sites, one Fantasy Sports site and the official site from each of the ‘big 3’ sports – football (the US version – the NFL), baseball (MLB) and basketball (NBA).

The sports offering from the Yahoo! portal is the most popular sports site with over 20 million Unique US visitors, closely followed by sports broadcaster ESPN. It is testament to the intrinsic part of sports in American culture that almost half (44%) of Americans online visit a sports site and both the top two sites are visited by one in every eight Americans online. It’s also interesting to note that these two most popular sites are also the most engaging – not a common occurrence – having the highest average time per visitor amongst the leading sites.

In terms of audience, the US audience is of similar composition to the UK in terms of gender with 56% being male. However, unlike many other countries, the 18-34 year old age group aren’t so well represented. The US sports audience tends to overperform on attracting the older demographic, for example, 34% of the US sports audience is over 50 years old compared to 15% in Spain, 19% in Italy, 25% in France, 26% in the UK, and 28% in both Germany and Australia.

By Alex Burmaster | European Internet Analyst | Nielsen Online