Tens of millions of Europeans took advantage of a broadband connection during February, according to the latest figures from comScore.

The digital marketing intelligence firm found that 386.6 million European citizens went online throughout the month, racking up an average of 28.2 hours of usage per person.

Researchers discovered that Brits spend more time online than their counterparts in any other European nation, with the typical UK user clocking up 36.7 hours on the internet in February. The Netherlands and Turkey came in second and third places with totals of 34.8 and 33.9 hours online respectively.

The UK ranks fourth in Europe for the total number of unique users with 37.4 million, behind first-placed Russia, then Germany and France.

Furthermore, comScore revealed that the typical British internet user visited more than 3,400 websites in February, a figure that was only topped by Poland and Turkey.

Among its other findings, the study showed that sports sites are accessed by 46 per cent of European web users, with the highest penetration - approximately 70 per cent - recorded in Turkey and Ireland.

Spain (65.9 per cent) and the UK (64.3 per cent) also appeared toward the top of the European sport website access league, in third and fourth places respectively.

Males were found to be almost twice as engaged with sports sites as females, with the average man spending 68 minutes accessing sports content, compared with 36.5 minutes for women.

"Interestingly, amongst women, the most engaged age group were the 45 to 54-year-olds who spent 40.8 minutes on the category on average in February 2012," comScore commented.

The news comes just weeks after comScore found that more than one-third of smartphone users in the five biggest European markets - France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK - accessed news websites via a browser or app in January.

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