Not the England loses to Northern Ireland 1-0 in World Cup qualifying’ football, either, but the gridiron version.
ESPN.com topped the weekly ratings for sports sites, for the period ending August 21st. Nielsen//NetRatings figures provided by the Center for Media Research show 6.2 million visitors arrived as ESPN.com for that week.
Yahoo Sports followed behind at 5.3 million, while Fox Sports on MSN hit 5.2 million. The Fox/MSN fantasy football offering, new this year, has gotten off to a rough start. Many services were offline this morning, and scheduled drafts for some leagues were not conducted. Their site offered an apology this morning:
Due to high traffic, we have disabled certain links and features. Live Scores and My Team are the only items available at this point. We are sorry for the inconvenience and we are trying to rectify the problem.
Dear Fantasy Football player,
We appreciate your patience as we launch our new online football game. We want to be up front with you that some difficulties may continue through Week 1 of the NFL season. Our goal remains to deliver the best game anywhere, and we appreciate your patience as we forge ahead.
– MSN and FOX Sports
The NFL Internet Network had 4.7 million visitors for that week; there had been a lot of skepticism surrounding their launch of a dedicated cable channel, but the NFL has shown it can draw in any medium, be it Internet or cable. AOL Sports finished just behind the NFL with a shade over 4 million.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
