ESPN Digital Media Records Successful 2012 Across the Board

In 2012, ESPN continued to lead the Sports category across online, mobile, video, and digital audio and innovate across fantasy, games, and social media platforms.  Its emphasis on personalization coupled with products, services, and campaigns that resonate with sports fans in new ways along with greater distribution of its platforms than ever before is a formula for yet another successful year for ESPN Digital Media.

“ESPN is the default setting for sports fans – true tune-in, turn-on media,” said John Kosner, EVP, ESPN Digital and Print Media.  “We are never satisfied and always moving forward, constantly striving to exceed fans’ expectations.  Our best available screen philosophy drives our thinking, and we are building a suite of elegant products that are easy to use and of unmatched quality that make sense together to deliver what fans want anytime, anywhere and on any device.  Put it together and ESPN is second to none – not just for fans – but for rights holders who benefit from enhanced content and viewership, advertisers that leverage our ad innovation solutions, marketers seeking to associate themselves with our brand and affiliates that see the value in reaching those fans across digital platforms.”

A snapshot of the numbers and major milestones for ESPN Digital Media in 2012:

ESPN.com

  • Averaged 37.3 million unique visitors per month (source: comScore)
  • Averaged 8.6 million unique visitors with a 4% increase both in total minutes (81.4 million) and average minute audience (1,854) per month across all five ESPN Local sites (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and Dallas) compared to the previous year
  • ESPN Insider grew to over 726,000 subscribers in 2012, up 13 percent compared to the previous year

Grantland.com

  • Celebrated its first anniversary on Jun. 8
  • Introduced new original videos and web series, including the 30 For 30 Shorts – the first of which debuted in May – and Grantland’s YouTube channel that launched in September
  • Averaged 2.2 million unique visitors and 27.6 million total minutes per month (source: comScore)

ESPNFC & ESPNcricinfo

  • ESPNFC first launched as a preview in June for EURO 2012, logging an average of 919,000 unique visitors and 12.7 million minutes per day during the tournament, up 35 percent and 205 percent respectively compared to EURO 2008 (source: Adobe/Omniture)

WatchESPN & ESPN3

  • Signed four additional distribution deals in 2012 – Comcast, Cablevision, Cox, and Charter – making WatchESPN available to seven of the top ten multichannel video programming distributors nationwide
  • WatchESPN now accessible on computers, smartphones, tablets and – through a new agreement signed in June 2012 – via ESPN on Xbox LIVE to Gold members
  • Distribution for WatchESPN increased to 46 million, while ESPN3 grew to 83 million households nationwide

ESPN Mobile

  • #1 in the Sports category across the mobile Web and apps (source: Nielsen, Jan-Nov) in average minute audience (14,600), unique visitors (13.3 million) and total minutes (642 million)
  • Leading mobile Web sports site for the 6th year in a row, with a 33% category share of minutes, triple that of its closest competitor, and is the 8th most-trafficked site on the mobile Web overall in 2012
  • ESPN consistently remained atop the most downloaded free sports apps for iPhone in the App Store with its four pillars of content: scores (ScoreCenter), news (SportsCenter Feed), audio (ESPN Radio) and video (WatchESPN)

Digital Audio

  • ESPNRadio.com averaged more than 714,000 million unique listeners per month that logged over 95,388,000 million total listening hours in 2012, with 11,240,000 million session starts per month (source: Ando Media)
  • ESPN Audio NOW Player on ESPNRadio.com also logged its best month ever in March since it first launched eleven years ago, generating nearly 1.51 million page views from users listening between 30-60 minutes of digital audio (source: Adobe/Omniture)

Social Media

  • Announced a strategic collaboration with Twitter in May that offers fans and advertisers unique, interactive programs around major sporting events promoted across Twitter, ESPN networks, ABC, ESPN.com, ESPN Mobile and more
  • Launched Live Voting on Facebook for First Take and SportsCenter and on Twitter for Sunday NFL Countdown
  • ESPN’s Facebook fans and Twitter followers grew to more than 35.6 million and 52.7 million respectively in 2012, up 55 percent and 151 percent compared to the previous year.

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