Record traffic

There has been a surge in the numbers of people following the World Cup online compared to 2002 tournament.

Fifa says that the official site of the competition is attracting an average of five million unique users a day.

The most popular day was Monday 12 June, when 6.2 million fans visited the website.

That was also the day that attracted the most clicks, with 226 million page views.

In the first week of the tournament, Fifa reported more than 1.2 billion page impressions.

This compares to a total of two billion page views for the entire 2002 World Cup.

BBC figures

Sports and gambling sites have been riding high due to the intense interest in the football.

The BBC Sport website is the most popular online source for World Cup news in the UK, according by a study released last week by internet research firm Nielsen/NetRatings.

More than 1.3 million football fans visited the site in the first week of the tournament.

The study showed more than half of the number of people visiting sports websites chose the corporation.

The BBC is also streaming more than 50 hours of World Cup football to UK internet users.

But it can only show live video from matches broadcast on its television channels.

By comparison, Fifa is showing video clips from all the matches for free.