With spring around the corner – and the line-up for this year’s Glasto revealed – it’s not long until Brits can enjoy some much needed fun in the sun. Kicking of our Summer 2024 Insight Series, we take a look at Sport as you can expect the EUROS and Paris Games to entertain, excite and elate the nation.
Sport is a huge passion point for millions of Brits. To say it’s a national obsession would be an understatement.
Whether it’s played, watched, followed – or read about in our premium publishers – Sport is a source of entertainment, pride and debate. It’s highly emotive, creates communities and can unify the nation, which we’ll no doubt see when Team GB and ParalympicsGB athletes participate in the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games later this year.
Sport engagement grows on major sporting events
Sport is also one of the biggest content areas of interest for Ozone’s nationwide audience of more than 40m online consumers*. Across our Premium Web platform in 2023, 3.5bn Sport page views** made it our third biggest category behind News & Politics and Pop Culture.
Annually last year, reader engagement with Sport grew by more than a third, bolstered by increased interest in major sporting events like the FIFA Women’s World Cup, the Golf Ryder Cup and the Rugby World Cup in France. And as an Olympic and Paralympic year, 2024 promises even more with the men’s UEFA European Championships also taking place in the summer.
Q1 points to further growth in 2024
Reader engagement with Sport has got off to a flyer in 2024, with page views in the first two months of the year almost 50% higher than the same period in 2023.
In January, teenage sensation Luke ‘The Nuke’ Littler lit up the okie and blew up Darts. Page views for the sport increased massively with 3.9x growth. Then, sporting veteran Ronnie O’Sullian rocketed to a record eight Masters title to more than double engagement with Snooker. Elsewhere, the Australian Open aced January page views for Tennis, with 3.3x growth.
In February the Six Nations kicked off to grow reader engagement with Rugby content by +40% compared to January with page views up by more than two thirds annually. Late in the month, the 2024 Formula 1 season began in Bahrain. Auto Racing page views grew significantly, with monthly reader engagement 3.5x higher.
Also in March, Tennis, again, returned to the attention of our sport-loving audience, with page views surging by almost three-quarters month on month.
Interest grew as first, at Indian Wells, Emma Raducanu won two matches at a tournament for the first time since her return to action at the start of the year. Then, Sir Andy Murray, delivered two vintage displays in his opening matches at the Miami Open and then pulled up with a swan-song season threatening injury, jeopardising his final Wimbledon appearance.
As the prestige grand slam in the ATP Tour, Wimbledon is a key time for reader engagement with our premium publishers’ tennis coverage. In the past two years, Tennis page views across June and July, when the tournament is typically held, are 3.8x higher than normal.
Football’s set to heat up during the EUROS
The year’s summer of sport begins with UEFA EURO 2024, which takes place in Germany from June to July. As with all major tournament football, Britain’s die-hard and fair-weather fans will follow the home nations England, Scotland and – hopefully – Wales feverishly, with Ozone a go-to destination for premium punditry.
As forecast in Planning Ahead for 2024 with Reading the Nation, we expect Football page views during the tournament to be c.30% higher than normal. Our Football audience is also set to double, as it has done on average during international football tournaments previously. To help brands capitalise on reaching up to 24m engaged football fans when they’re reading more about the sport they love, we’ve prepared a special insight report, How to win big at UEFA EURO 2024.
From beginning campaign activity as tournament excitement builds before a ball is even kicked and optimising spend around the progress of the home nations teams to the content areas that will see a halo effect from tournament interest, download the report below…
Herculean growth expected during the Paris Games
Hot off the heels of the Euros, the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games take place in France from July to September. As we saw with the Tokyo Games in 2021, we’re expecting sport loving Brits to follow Team GB and ParalymicGB athletes throughout their journey to medal glory. We’ve prepared another special insight report, Owning the Olympic Games with Ozone.
The special report highlights how brands can make the most of the pre-Games build up, by activating two-weeks prior to the opening ceremony, upweight activity around key moments like the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, and capitalise on magic medal-winning moments and maximise exposure across the most memorable stories. Download the report below…
Our huge Sport audience gets even bigger
Ozone’s portfolio of leading premium publishers already boasts some of the finest editorial voices in the sporting world. To bolster our sport offering, we’ve welcomed Planet Sport – and its stable of sport-specific online publications, which include Planet Rugby, The National League and Love Rugby League – as our latest publisher partner. Based in Leeds, Planet Sport is one of the UK’s top dedicated online sport publishers that entertains and engages sport audiences. Planet Sport’s editorially-governed content is created for sport fans, by sport fans. The Planet Sport portfolio is read by almost 3m internet users a month1.
Whatever the discipline, there’s a highly engaged, obsessively attentive Sport audience at Ozone. From Football, Rugby and Tennis to Golf, Cricket, Horse Racing and now Darts, our premium publisher punditry makes the premium web a go-to destination for all Sport fans – from the fair-weather to the die-hard.
* Ipsos Iris, December 2023
** + all other data points, Ozone, 2023-2024