SONISPHERE Storms BT DIGITAL MUSIC AWARDS Nominations

Having asserted its position as the world's largest touring rock festival and achieved sell-out status for the U.K. leg at Knebworth in just its second year, Sonisphere is now gaining high recognition in the digital realm. As an exceptional case, Sonisphere is the only brand to have gained two shortlisted entries among the final six in a single category — "Best Event" — in this year's BT Digital Music Awards, the Oscars of the online world. It is also up for the People's Choice category of "Best Official Website."

Its two successful entries in the "Best Event" category are for:

1) The groundbreaking live "cinecast" broadcast of the Bulgarian leg of the festival tour which was watched by over 100,000 cinema-goers in the U.K. and beyond and famously had fans forming circle pits and stage invasions in the Leicester Square Odeon back in June.

2) The integrated digital strategy that helped propel the Knebworth event in its second year to become "the U.K.'s premier metal festival" (The Guardian) — one of the most spectacular festival success stories in recent years.

Other contenders for the award include Glastonbury Festival, PENDULUM's album preview live stream, Nokia presents Rihanna Live and The Ukulele Prom.

Underlining the phenomenal growth of the Sonisphere brand in the U.K. and further afield has been an intensive focus on digital communication as a means to attract, engage with and reward what has already become a loyal, colossal audience of rock fans.

The last eight months have seen Sonisphere amass a staggering 7.7 million unique visitors to its official web site with 27 million page impressions, 10 million views on its online Sonisphere TV video player and 209,000 Facebook fans across Europe. It undertook the largest ever deployment of official festival mobile apps, releasing 33 properties including separate iPhone, Android and Java versions for each event on the tour. The Knebworth iPhone app was ranked No. 4 in the official iTunes U.K. Music App Chart in August and boasts a four star customer rating.

Stuart Galbraith, series producer for Sonisphere festival, comments: "I can't emphasise too much the importance of digital to Sonisphere. We are very proud to produce what has become one of the most visited rock web sites in the world right now and to have laid new ground that is already re-defining the way all music festivals communicate and build affinity with their audiences."

Over 700,000 fans visited the 11 Sonisphere festivals across Europe this year, which means more than one million festival goers have attended some of the best rock festivals in Europe over the last two years. The festival survived mud baths in Switzerland and Sweden, a sandstorm in Spain a freak tornado in Finland. The Poland, Turkey, Sweden and Switzerland shows were the largest rock festivals ever to be staged in those countries.