With just one day to go before Euro 2004Êkicks off, Hitwise reports that traffic to the official Euro 2004 website has grown six-fold in the last few weeks as football fans gear up for the start of the tournament. The site has skyrocketed in the Hitwise Football rankings over the past month, increasing from 38th place a month ago to become the 2nd most visited website yesterday, whilst ‘Euro 2004’ is currently the most searched for key phrase within the football category.
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Coinciding with the tournament is a rise in traffic to the online gambling sector, which has recorded a 10% increase in traffic to gambling websites in the past month. Betfair (www.betfair.com), which allows users to make or take bets on sporting events, is the most visited gambling website and currently accounts for more than one in 10 visits made to the gambling sector. Hitwise Clickstream data reveals that 1.49% of all traffic leaving the Euro 2004 website goes to a gambling website as punters place their bets on which team is going to win the tournament on July 4th.

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Fantasy sites are also proving popular with football fans, with the official fantasy football site sponsored by McDonald’s (www.euro2004fantasy.uefa.com) the top destination for users leaving the Euro 2004 website in the last week, accounting for 9.54% of downstream traffic.
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