More than 1 million fans flocked to official club websites for the release of the 2014/15 season fixtures last Wednesday as The Football League enjoyed a record-breaking day.
Sky Bet Championship, Sky Bet League 1 and Sky Bet League 2 fixtures for the 2014-15 season were revealed on club websites at 9:00am on Wednesday 18 June last week.
Football fans, including City supporters, clamouring for news on the first games of the new campaign went straight to their club desktop and mobile sites, with nearly 2.5million page views in 24 hours.
On a record breaking day, desktop and mobile sites combined, saw 1,002,228 unique visitors across club sites and Football-League.co.uk, an impressive 30% increase on the 736,993 visitors on fixtures day in 2013. Total page views were also up 75% to 2,411,426 compared with 1,377,467 in 2013.
The clubs’ new mobile sites, launched and rolled out in the spring to all 90 clubs who work with Football League Interactive, saw a radical shift in behaviour compared with the previous year. Fans spent on average 2 minutes on their mobile, compared with under 30 seconds in 2013. There were nearly 674k views on mobile this year, compared to 287k in 2013, an increase of 135%.
Fixtures release day is the biggest day of the year for football club websites with transfer deadline days being the only other dates that generate a similar amount of traffic. The Football League interactive team, working with their technology partners Sapient Nitro, Perform Group, Scribble Live and Akamai, ensured that all the clubs’ websites stayed live and refreshed throughout the day.
Digital Director at The Football League Russell Scott said “The day of the fixtures release is always the biggest day of the year for club websites so we’re delighted to break records once again. The Football League interactive network of 90 clubs across the Premier League, Football League and Football Conference has once again demonstrated the great strength of all these clubs working together.”