eBay bids dried up during World Cup football matches

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World Cup fever trumped the obsession with online auction bidding as eBay Inc., the world's largest Web auction company, disclosed on Wednesday how traffic to its site fell each time a football game started.

Chief Executive Meg Whitman told investors during a conference call held to discuss the Silicon Valley company's quarterly results that eBay had managed to meet Wall Street financial expectations despite the phenomenal pause in sales.

"The first ball (that) was kicked, site activity declined; it stayed low through the whole game and then popped right back up again and we saw this time after time again," Whitman said of matches in the month-long tournament that began June 9.

eBay bids dried up during World Cup football matches [today.reuters.co.uk]

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Straws and clutching come to mind. Surely anyone who started watching any of the England games or matches like Ukraine v Switzerland would have been back at their PC and bidding happy within 5 minutes ;-)