19 March 2009 - www.archery.org celebrates one year with 2.5 million visitors!

PRESS RELEASE   Lausanne (SUI) – 19 March 2009     www.archery.org celebrates one year with 2.5 million visitors!   The International Archery Federation (FITA) has gone through major remodelling of its websites over the last few years and reached 2.5 million visitors over the last twelve months.   As a recap, the first major improvement of the FITA website came in the spring of 2006 with a new site launched on time for the start of the Archery World Cup (www.archeryworldcup.org). FITA then continued its web development and launched a new version of www.archery.org on 19 March 2008. Both sites are now completely integrated and have attracted around 2.5 million visitors over the last year.   FITA enjoyed peak months last April (with two World Cup stages) and in August (Olympic Games) with respectively 220,000 and 276,000 unique visitors (outside a new live system). FITA also launched its new live scoring and commentary system in time for the Games with the following outcome:   Ø 378,000 unique visitors on the pages for individual matches (four days = average of 94,500 per day) Ø 116,000 unique visitors on the pages for team matches (two days = average of 58,000 per day)   The live scoring and commentary system allowed the fans to follow every arrow, every impact (arrow placement) on the target, together with live commentaries in English and French of every match during the Olympic Games. This feature has been used for every final match since then.   Other developments on the website include an interactive results database displaying the results brackets of major tournaments. It also allows the fans and media to search all results of one individual and head-to-head matches of any individual or team against another one.   Recently, FITA has enjoyed a thorough success with its major event in the winter, the Indoor World Archery Championships, on 4-8 March 2009:   Date Hits Page Views Visitors Average Visit Length Wed 04.03.2009 461,355 58,614 5,205 08:27 Thu 05.03.2009 942,957 140,915 11,929 17:48 Fri 06.03.2009 1,335,171 165,729 13,508 13:24 Sat 07.03.2009 1,180,032 146,972 9,759 10:46 Sun 08.03.2009 2,813,230 441,132 11,892 20:26 Mon 09.03.2009 997,163 134,726 7,448 08:47 Tue 10.03.2009 570,761 72,535 4,887 08:12   A little more than a year ago, FITA also launched two more websites.   FITA once again led the way in launching a dedicated archery channel www.archery.tv on YouTube and this has been praised at major sporting events. Studies and experience across the sports world have indeed shown that free clips and videos on the web give maximal exposure. Here are launch-to-date details of www.archery.tv:   Ø 1,621,360 video views Ø 387 videos currently live Ø 104,476 max views per video Ø 4,189 average views per video Ø 1,710 current subscribers Ø 307,142 channel views   For the 2007 holiday season, FITA also launched a modern E-shop http://shop.archery.org, in partnership with PGSA—a company located in Lausanne, Switzerland. After more than a year in operations, the fans have truly enjoyed many quality products that were introduced with the World Cup logo (polo, cap, arrow counter, quiver, pins, key-chains, etc.)   Faced with this success, FITA will add hardware resources for these websites in the near future in order to further enhance the fans’ experience. FITA is looking forward to have numerous fans tuned on www.archery.org for Stage 1 of the World Cup 2009 in Santo Domingo (DOM) early April!   Didier MIEVILLE FITA Communication