Rivals confirmed as largest online UK sports network

LONDON - Rivals Digital Media has been confirmed as the largest online sports network in the UK in terms of traffic, following its second annual ABC Electronic audit.

The audit saw RDM's network of sites receive 2,144,908 unique users and 60,706,154 page impressions for the month of March 2003.

The audit was carried out by ABCe between March 1-31 across RDM's network of sport sites, which include , and .

RDM has built on its product offering over the last year, identifying several niche market opportunities to integrate into its six core sporting brands, which with the above three are , and .

Richard Pembroke, managing director for Rivals Digital Media, said: "We are delighted to receive confirmation of these traffic figures from ABCe as it lays testament to the continued performance of our sites over the last year, whereby we have maintained more than 2m unique users cross network since our last audit in March 2002."

One initiative came through RDM's mobile services arm of the business, where various sport alert packages were already available on the individual sports sites. RDM went on to launch new mobile and games channels across all of its sites, offering users sports-related mobile and gaming content, which has added stickiness to the sites' editorial and pictorial content.

Richard Foan, managing director for ABCe, said: "As more advertisers and media buyers demand greater accountability from media owners, it is great to see RDM continuing to lead the way using industry-agreed standards and using this as a clear differentiator in the marketplace to demonstrate its performance."

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