Sports fans swamp Olympic websites

By DITA DE BONI

Olympics mania has led to Games-related websites being the three most popular sporting sites visited by domestic net users.

The New Zealand Olympics Committee website was the best-performing local site over the opening weekend.

The site was the 20th most popular worldwide in the first few working days of the Games, says Hitwise, which measures local internet traffic.

Hitwise international business manager Brendan McKeegan says results show that the internet has "clearly established itself as a key source of information and news for New Zealanders during the Olympic period."

He says it complements both radio and television coverage.

Nielsen//NetRatings, meanwhile, has collated a list of the most popular Olympics-related domains surfed globally, with nbcolympics.com as the most popular address on the first Monday of the Games, with 5.7 million page views.

In descending list of popularity, sports.yahoo.com, olympics.com, usatoday.com and sportsillustrated.
cnn.com were next most visited.

Nielsen//NetRatings data also shows that visitors to sites in Australia, the US and the UK grew almost 10-fold during the opening ceremony.