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BBC World Cup coverage attracts more than 1.7m online viewers

Posted: 30/06/06 By: Oliver Luft

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The BBC has received more than 1.7 million requests via its broadband service to watch live World Cup matches in the first two weeks of the tournament.

The most-watched match was the opening fixture on Friday, 9 June, between Germany and Costa Rica, which attracted 153,909 requests.

England v Paraguay, on June 10, also pulled in more than 100,000 requests, as did six other games in the group stages of the competition.

The average match was viewed by 75,157 people, with a daily average of 144,052 requests from users wishing to stream the games.

The BBC's World Cup website and BBCi both experienced record levels of usage during the World Cup - the first major football tournament where UK online users have been able to access games over broadband.

The World Cup website has received 200 million page impressions in its first fortnight, with around three million unique users accessing BBC Sport every day.

Traffic to the website has been at its busiest during weekdays. The site has been averaging 14.9 million impressions and peaked at 16.6 million on Thursday, 22 June.

BBCi's red button service has also been a huge success, with 4.6 million digital satellite viewers - more than one in four of digital satellite viewers in the UK - hitting the red button during the World Cup.

This makes it the BBC's second best-ever interactive service after the 2004 Summer Olympics, when nine million digital satellite viewers used the service to access a far wider range of sporting events.

Roger Mosey, director of BBC Sport, said: "BBC Sport said from the start this would be a World Cup in which we offered unprecedented choice - different platforms, new technology and an increasing range of options for viewers and listeners.

"These figures show we've done just that, and the audience are loving it."

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