Mobile traffic sets new record for BBC Sport
February 5, 2014
Traffic from the January football transfer window, a busy fixture list and the start of the RBS Six Nations helped break a host of digital records for BBC Sport, including the highest ever number of people accessing the site from mobile devices (3.3m unique UK browsers) on February 1st.
This contributed to BBC Sport’s busiest day outside of the London 2012 Olympic Games with a total of 6.9 million unique UK browsers. Handheld devices proved the most popular way of following the action, as mobile and tablets accounted for a combined 68 per cent of total coverage compared to 32 per cent for PCs.
BBC Sport also set a number of other records (outside of the Olympics) throughout January, including:
• Record total monthly page views of 1.3 billion in the UK (1.6bn globally)
• Record total monthly traffic of 48.5 milliom unique UK browsers (70.1m globally)
• Two record weeks of traffic in the UK – there were a record 18.8 million unique browsers in the week commencing January 20th, which was then surpassed the following week (w/c 27 Jan) with 19.7 million
• Combined mobile and tablet usage accounted for over half of all traffic in January (54 per cent)
In the UK, total traffic during the hugely popular football transfer deadline day on January 31st reached 6 million unique UK browsers, an increase of 11 per cent compared to the same day last year. The shift toward handheld devices continued with mobile traffic growing by 35 per cent to 2.3m unique browsers and tablets growing by 67 per cent to 1m unique browsers over the same period.
The data shows how audiences switched devices throughout the day to follow the latest news and gossip wherever they were, with PC usage peaking between 12noon–1pm as people caught up with developments on their lunch break, before handheld devices took over in the afternoon and evening, peaking between 10pm-11pm.