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There has been a lot of hype about football fans having to turn to the internet because games are taking place during work hours. This has always been the case for tennis fans, and the organisers of the Wimbledon tournament are well aware of it. Their web site is of growing importance for tennis fans in 200 countries, many of whom lack alternative coverage.

The web site of the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) (www.wimbledon.org) is built and hosted by IBM and has recently enjoyed a rapid spurt of growth, although it has been around since 1995. Unique users nearly doubled to more than three million during the tournament last year, while total visits soared from nine million to 22 million. Page views trebled to 208 million. Traffic is driven by TV advertising and search engines, which respond well to keywords such as 'Wimbledon' and even 'tennis'. The average length of stay for visitors is 69 minutes - a level of stickiness most site owners would die for.

The AELTC has taken full advantage of the internet to create a higher profile for the event around the world. But this is not a commercial operation in the ordinary sense. The tournament is so established that it funds and markets itself, which means that the online operation can be simple and uncluttered by advertising. Sponsors including Robinsons, Hertz, Rolex and Slazenger are tucked away in a section of the site that details their involvement and offers links to their web sites.

Rob McCowen, marketing director at AELTC, says: "We could generate more income by advertising, but that just brings peripheral income that can lose the loyalty of our core audience. We are not selling airline tickets or financial services because that would dilute what we are trying to achieve."

The most popular feature on the site is the real-time score board, which allows users to keep an eye on how matches are progressing. This service draws about 70 per cent of total site traffic. There is also an eight-hour live online presentation giving ball-by-ball commentary for those with more viewing time.

The BBC owns the television rights to the tournament, so the site cannot use live video, but it gets around this with freeze frames of play that refresh at 10-second intervals. Visitors do have access to video cameras showing what's going on off-court, however. This is especially useful in bringing the event to life for distant users. Other features include profiles of the players, pages on the history and background of the tournament and video clips of past matches.

One area that is expanding rapidly is Wimbledon's online retail operation.

The online shop offers about 70 products, including caps, bags and videos of classic matches. About half of the business comes from purchases of the Wimbledon towel.

The AELTC brings in £40 million from merchandising around the world, £2m of which comes from direct sales through the web site and its bricks-and-mortar store. The site's contribution to that £2m is about £500,000, most of which comes in during Wimbledon fortnight, but this figure is growing every year.

"We have developed the business slowly and carefully to ensure our service levels are good, McCowen says. "If you have a huge shop but can't deliver, it causes frustration."

IBM has provided Wimbledon's technology infrastructure since 1990. But the growth of the web site and its massive increase in traffic represents a major challenge for the company. Andy Burn, UK web producer for Wimbledon at IBM, says: "To ensure that the user experience is straightforward, we tend to sustain the same concepts year on year. But there are newer technologies and better ways of doing things that enable us to stay ahead of the curve.

For example, you have to be able to cover the peaks when everyone logs on at once."

The biggest spike in activity was on the day of the men's final last year, which fell on a Monday after rain stopped play the previous day.

Some 800,000 users were on the site at a time. "That took our planning to the limits, Burn says. "We succeeded, but could not have handled any more traffic."

The IBM team is spread between Atlanta, Georgia, in the US, where the technology is based, the UK where all the action takes place, and Raleigh, New York, which houses the sports events hosting team. These groups work remotely throughout the year using conferencing tools, and come together only two weeks before the event, which is the first time the hardware and software are put through their paces. About 200 servers are located in three separate 'farms' around the world, supplemented by three caching machines. These handle some 140,000 updates day at a constant level.

To cope with peaks, content is dumped in order of importance to speed up the essential features and ensure that real-time score updates remain constant. "Content shedding is built in and can be managed quite easily by pushing buttons, Burn explains. "Normally, the users won't notice. Our planning for Wimbledon is very good, but over the years we have been caught out in almost every possible way, by network failures, server faults and power cuts. But that's all part of the fun and we know what we need to do to prevent a total collapse."

Wimbledon is in the enviable position of not needing to promote its event, but it is nevertheless researching email as a means of keeping fans up to date. On the downside, the high visibility the tournament generates each summer makes it an obvious target for marketers of all kinds of products and services. The AELTC tries to prevent branded goods such as flags or umbrellas being taken into its grounds.

It also strives to ensure that tennis fans will not be ambushed by opportunist marketers online. The suffixes .org and .com both bring up the official site, and the AELTC has registered about 30 other Wimbledon-related names to discourage other companies from trying to cash in on the event's reputation.

"We want the public to get to the official site as easily as possible without being confused by people pretending to have some association with us, McCowen explains.

In less obtrusive ways, sports suppliers can take advantage of the tennis mania at the end of June without overtly linking to the event. One example is Italian sportswear manufacturer Ellesse, which has been running a web campaign to publicise its tennis range in the run-up to the event (see panel, above).

In another promotion, Slazenger is offering signed tennis rackets, bags and balls as prizes to celebrate the brand's 100th year as official ball supplier to Wimbledon. Consumers take part by emailing from a pop-up box on its corporate site.

Wimbledon fortnight is also a key time of year for Sweatband.com, a sportswear e-tailer which runs the retail arm of the Lawn Tennis Association. The site offers a 20 per cent discount to the organisation's 88,000 members.

It has also been promoting a Head Ti Radical tennis racket for half-price at £70, which it will refund if Andre Agassi wins the tournament - Agassi had an input into the design of the racket and now plays with it.

Sweatband is setting up a microsite to coincide with Wimbledon to promote merchandise related to players. It will be advertised on AOL and Freeserve, with buttons and promo boxes within the shopping areas driving traffic to the site. During the championship, Freeserve's community area will be fed with tennis content by Sweatband's sister firm, Tennistoday.org.

The Wimbledon site is also helping to develop a new kind of broadcasting.

Marcus Buckland, the Sky sports presenter, will co-host the event on the web for a second year.

The difference between radio and web broadcasting is that commentary needs to take account of the site's freeze-frames that change every few seconds. "If there is a shot of Henman with a clenched fist, I will refer to it so that there is continuity between what people are watching and hearing, says Buckland.

Given the private nature of the medium, presenters can afford to be less formal than they would be on a TV or radio broadcast. "We were quite laid back last year, Buckland says. "Most people said they got a fantastic sense of the atmosphere."

Feedback is encouraged and emails are read out, with a competition awarding merchandise to the 'cyberfan of the day'. This helps to create a bond with visitors, Buckland claims.

He sees a great future for interactive broadcasting of this kind. "Last year, we had people getting up during the night in New Zealand to catch matches online, he says. "It is happening more and more and is definitely the way forward."

ROBINSONS EXTENDS REACH WITH FRUIT SHOOT SITE FOR KIDS

Soft drinks brand Robinsons' association with Wimbledon goes back to 1928, when a company representative who was present at the tournament decided to make a refreshing drink for the players. He came up with the brand's best-known product: Barley Water.

Robinsons sponsors both the tournament and British champion Tim Henman.

It also backs up-and-coming players aged between 13 and 21. Some of these youngsters play in the Junior Wimbledon event.

The brand is one of the few sponsors to feature on-camera during the event itself. Bottles on the umpire's chair ensure that it gets plenty of television coverage.

This year, Robinsons is extending its reach with a site to support kids' drink Fruit Shoot (www.fruitshoot.com).

The site was launched a month ago and covers different sports. During Wimbledon, it will focus on tennis. It will describe its Juniors' activity with the Lawn Tennis Association and encourage kids to take up the game by showing that a court and net are not necessary to get started.

The site is a colourful compendium of information, including the history of the sport, biographies of famous players, and facts from key matches.

It also describes what playing the sport involves and how to train for it. There is an events calendar and details of local contacts.

The site will also promote a roadshow, due to begin immediately after the Wimbledon tournament.

"Kids will be able to come along and play around with a racket and ball, says Ian Sheldon, associate director of sponsorship consultancy SPI. "If you get them that far, it will give them the idea that they don"t have to be a member of a club to play tennis."

Ellesse aims to seduce visitors with sport and fashion

Italian sportswear company Ellesse has launched a web site called Forplay for an English-speaking audience to coincide with the run-up to Wimbledon (www.forplay.it).

Ellesse aims to portray itself in a seductive way, fusing sport and fashion.

The Forplay site is part of an integrated campaign aiming to capitalise on the intense interest in tennis before and during the tournament.

The Flash-based design shows 3D male and female locker rooms, each with a man or woman showering. Clicking on an image brings up details of new products.

Each changing room also gives users access to free SMS messaging, e-cards, screensavers, desktop images and sound-sets.

"Getting the site going in time for the run-up to Wimbledon involved some fast work, says Steve Logan, sales and marketing director at Or Media, the design agency behind the site. "We started talks in early-March. By the time the concept was signed off, we had about two weeks to complete the project."

The focal point is a short video clip of a recent ad featuring model Anine Bing in an apparent love-making situation that turns out to be a game of tennis.

The steamy scene has been downloaded 20,000 times from Punchbaby.com, a site dedicated to showcasing viral material on the web.

It has been seen more than 100,000 times through Ifilm.com, and has reached number one in its viral chart.

Frank PR, meanwhile, was hired to send it to 3,500 people on its 'highly viral people' mailing list.