Nielsen//NetRatings said sports and gambling websites experienced a 40% increase in traffic yesterday, with a total of 885,000 unique users while 230,000 went online to get news, comment and gamble during the game.
The BBC's sports , was again the most popular sports website during the day, with 449,000 unique visitors, followed by football websites firm Premium TV with 123,000 and Sky Sports on 88,000.
William Hill overtook Ladbrokes as the most popular sports betting , reporting 54,000 unique visitors. Ladbroke's was bumped out of the top 10 most visited websites, but Nielsen//NetRatings suggested that online betting is more feasible for punters during the week than making a trip to the bookies.
Bet365 proved to be the "stickiest" , with users spending an average 29-minutes online, far higher than the average eight minutes spent on the sports websites in the top 10.
Nielsen//NetRatings said the results indicated that online gambling was becoming a bigger time-consumer than reading the pre-match build-up.
Alex Burmaster, European internet analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings, said sports websites proved to be four times more popular than gambling ones during the build-up to England's game against Trinidad & Tobago, but online gambling was more likely to hold user attention.
He said: "Visitors to [gambling websites] spend over one-and-a-half times longer [online], showing that gambling on sport online is a significantly more compelling activity than actually following it or reading about it.
Nielsen//NetRatings said it expected a significant increase in all online sports and gambling activity now that England had qualified for the next stage of the tournament.
The top 10 most visited sports and gambling websites for June 15 were:
1) BBC Sport - 449,000 unique visitors
2) Premium TV - 123,000
3) Sky Sports - 88,000
4) William Hill - 54,000
5) Sporting Life - 48,000
6) Fifa World Cup - 48,000
7) Bet365 - 42,000
8) Football365 - 41,000
9) Yahoo! Sports - 40,000
10) The Times - 35,000
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