By Jeremy Schlosberg
 
    Sunday's surprise Bowl game not only exceeded expected TV ratings, it succeeded in pushing some 650,000 viewers onto the web during the game.
     Thanks to ABC’s unflagging promotion of its so-called "Enhanced TV" web content, accessible on both Disney’s Espn.com and the National Football League’s Superbowl.com, TV viewers hit the web during the game and stayed there a good long time. Those 650,000 surf-and-watchers logged on to the web for an average of 42 minutes each on Sunday.
   What TV viewers found on the web was a variety of related content tightly synchronized with the ABC telecast of the game. ABC reports that some 4,000 graphics were created specially for the web programming.
    During the regular NFL season, ABC’s Enhanced TV offerings attracted approximately 75,000 users per game.
    The idea of sports fans in particular heading to the web to augment their TV watching is consistent with new data from Cyber Dialogue that says that sports is by far the likeliest type of TV show during which viewers simultaneously surf the web.
    Of the 10.2 million American adults Cyber Dialogue has identified as "simultaneous users," 24 percent say they go online during sports events. Night-time comedies and newsmagazines were next, both with 13 percent.
    And 51 percent of these 10.2 million simultaneous users report that they have visited a sports web site in the past three months, compared to just 37 percent of all online adults.
    Why the strong connection between simultaneous users and sports? 
     Cyber Dialogue analyst Idil Cakim suggests three reasons.
    "The specific segment of online adults who are simultaneous users tend in general to consume media more aggressively than average cyber-citizens," says Cakim.
    Sports in particular lends itself to this sort of intensive entertainment experience, she says.
     "Sports fans go to TV to watch an event but then they want more information on it, and they’re turning to the internet to get that information."
    An additional factor, says Cakim, is our fixation with numbers in the U.S.
  "The types of sports that are popular here tend to be very statistics driven," she says.
     Cyber Dialogue research shows that the two most common things that visitors to sports sites do is check scores and read up on sports news and information.
    Cakim also notes a predisposition among simultaneous users to fully engage in the interactive experience.
    "This crowd is ready to interact: they’re more likely to subscribe and they’re more likely to personalize."
    Among simultaneous users, 12 percent subscribe to sports sites that offer subscriptions of some sort, and 11 percent say they have personalized their experience on sports sites. This compares to 7 percent among all online adults who subscribe to sports sites and 6 percent who personalize them.
    The urge to interact was seen during Sunday’s Super Bowl. 
    Hours before the kickoff, some 217,000 users had already logged on to the web sites offering Enhanced TV thanks to a pre-game trivia contest that began at 2 p.m.
    Once on the web, some 10,000 users responded to a user survey during their visit. 
   ABC found that 58 percent of respondents were between the ages of 26 and 46, 64 percent were logging on in the company of friends or family, and 84 percent of users were male. 
    Ninety-six percent said they would use Enhanced TV again.
   They’ll get their chance long before the football season fires back up again. ABC plans to roll out an interactive play-along game in sync with "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" at the end of February.