Kentucky Derby Ratings Best in Over 17 Years: Web Traffic Way Up

Written by :

C Costigan

Published on :

4 May, 2009

2.9 million hits: That's the amount of traffic received to the Gambling911.com website courtesy of the 2009 Kentucky Derby (with a little help from the Manny Pacquiao-Ricky Hatton fight. On a typical day, the website will see around 600,000 hits. The site also received over a million page views for the first time in its 8 ½ year existence.

The 2.9 million number broke the record previously set this past Super Bowl Sunday (2.2 million hits). The 1 million page views registered Saturday beat the previous record also occurring during the February 1 Super Bowl of 830,937. The Gambling911.com website is exclusively content-driven and does not rely on posting forums and other interactive features that might otherwise boost page view numbers without doing much good for paid sponsors.

Each of the three days leading up to the Derby registered just over one million hits as well, demonstrating just how potent of a betting event the Kentucky Derby has become.

Television ratings acted as a reflection of these Web traffic numbers.

This year's Kentucky Derby earned a 10.2 overnight rating and 22 share during the 6-7 p.m. ET hour when the race was presented, according to data provided May 4 from Nielsen Media Research. The rating showed a gain of 7% from last year's 9.5/21 rating and is the highest-rated overnight for the Derby since Lil E Tee won in 1992, according to the website Bloodhorse.com.

Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher

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