WorldCup.ie is no 1 for Irish fans

WorldCup.ie, the online World Cup 2002 news website, was the number one website for Irish football fans during the World Cup.

The site, developed by Thomas Crosbie Media and Esat BT and sponsored by Ford Dealers of Ireland, was used by more than 430,000 World Cup Fans, viewing over 4m pages of live news on the site during the 2002 World Cup.

This figure represents over one third of the internet population in Ireland.

At its peak over 150,000 pages were being viewed by World Cup fans each day making it the most successful single event website ever in Ireland.

According to Ladbrokes.com, the online betting partner to WorldCup.ie, the site was one of the leading generators of bets from within the UK and Ireland before Ireland got knocked out of the competition by Spain.

Thomas Crosbie Media (TCM) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Thomas Crosbie Holdings, Ireland's leading electronic content provider.

TCM supplies content to ESAT BT's websites (oceanfree.net, iol.ie), TV3's Teletext service, Meteor's SMS and WAP services, Digiserve's online.ie and irishabroad.com breaking news as well as providing Intranet content for a number of leading Irish companies.

TCM's own businesses include RecruitIreland.com and MotorNet.ie.

Denis McSweeney, Marketing Director at Ford Ireland said: "We are delighted with the topicality and liveliness of WorldCup.ie together with the response levels achieved from adverts for Ford.ie.

"WorldCup.ie was also presented to our colleagues at Ford Europe where it was regarded as an advertising coup. The advertising creative in particular, was found to be particularly suited to the internet and achieved strong results."