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Europe's football website enjoyed a record 2008/09 season with major increases in Eastern Europe.

Record figures
The 2008/09 campaign not only produced stunning action on the pitch – but also equally impressive figures for UEFA's official website uefa.com and for euro2008.com, the official website of UEFA EURO 2008™.

Page views
In total, 2.9 billion page views were registered on both sites from June 2008 to May 2009. Sixty-one million visitors accessed euro2008.com in June 2008 alone, while 17 million visitors accessed uefa.com in the record month of April 2009.

Visitors
Some 63 per cent of visitors to euro2008.com came from Europe. Another 20 per cent were from the Americas, 14 per cent were from Asia and the remaining 3 per cent came from the rest of the world. Of the 10 languages euro2008.com offered, English was the most popular with 73 per cent of traffic, followed by German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. The leading countries with the most visitors to euro2008.com were the United Kingdom (15 per cent), the United States (8 per cent) and Germany (8 per cent).

Russia and Ukraine
From July 2008 and the start of the 2008/09 UEFA Champions League and UEFA Cup seasons, users focused on uefa.com, with both Russia and Ukraine becoming the strongest fan bases. The two countries were represented by five teams in the UEFA Cup Round of 16 – including eventual winners FC Shakhtar Donetsk.

Leading countries
Ten per cent of the visitors to uefa.com came from Russia, three times as many compared with the same period for the 2007/08 season. A further 8.98 per cent came from Ukraine. Overall, 31 per cent of all visitors were from Eastern Europe – almost twice as many as for the 2007/08 campaign. The other leading countries were the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Top months
April 2009, which included the quarter-finals and semi-final first legs of the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Cup, proved to be the most successful month for uefa.com in terms of visitors. The 17 million visitors surpassed the record set the previous month by 1.5 million. As far as page views were concerned, May 2009 was the most successful with more than 229 million page views – over six times more than for September 2001 when uefa.com was relaunched.

'Global appeal'
"Just as UEFA's competitions continue to provide global appeal, the evidence from uefa.com's traffic figures show that this appeal is extending to our audience online," said Alexandre Fourtoy, UEFA Media Technologies SA CEO. "We are excited by the introduction of the UEFA Europa League next season which is sure to extend our reach even further. The centralised marketing of the competition also allows us to offer live pay-per-view video streaming, highlights and enhanced live coverage, to rival the existing coverage we provide from the UEFA Champions League."

Looking ahead
To further enhance the online experience for fans in the future, UEFA is currently exploring the possibility of adding new features to the website for the 2009/10 season.

uefa.com by numbers (June 2008 to May 2009)

• 1.6 billion page views
• Record page views of 229 million in May 2009
• 17 million visitors in April 2009
• 10 per cent of visitors came from Russia (three times as many compared with the previous season)
• 31 per cent of visitors came from Eastern Europe (twice as many compared with the previous season)

euro2008.com by numbers

• 1.3 billion page views
• 61 million visitors in June 2008
• The most visitors to the site came from the United Kingdom (15 per cent)
• Traffic numbers represent an increase of over 250 per cent compared with euro2004.com
• From the 10 languages the site offered, English was the most popular with 73 per cent

(Source: UEFA)