ESPN Digital Media Sets Sports Category Record in September
Story Highlights
ESPN Digital Media reached 72.7 million unique visitors in September – the largest monthly unique reach ever within the sports category – across computers, smartphones and tablets, according to comScore Multi-Platform data.
ESPN accounted for 30% of all sports category usage across digital platforms last month, more than the Nos. 2 and 3 sports properties combined (Yahoo! Sports and NBC Sports Network, and NFL Internet Group).
ESPN has remained No. 1 in the sports category for average minute audience, share of category audience, total minutes of usage, total visits, and male unique visitors every month since comScore began releasing Multi-Platform data in September 2012. Other results from the September comScore Multi-Platform report:
- In total, ESPN digital properties attracted 72.7 million unique visitors, logging 7.3 billion minutes of usage and 805.5 million visits.
- A record-setting 47.4 million people used ESPN mobile properties for 3.2 billion minutes in September, the first month ever in which more unique people visited ESPN mobile than ESPN.com (46.1MM). ESPN led the No. 2 mobile sports entity by +112% for unique visitors and +100% for minutes.
- 36% of ESPN’s unique users – 26.5 million people – exclusively accessed content on smartphones and tablets, and 44% of all time spent with ESPN digital content came from mobile device users.
- The 100.3 minutes per user spent with ESPN digital properties (such as ESPN.com, WatchESPN and ScoreCenter) during September was more than any of the top 65 sports category entities.
- 168,742 people used ESPN digital properties on computers, smartphones and tablets in the average minute throughout September. Among men 18-49 and men 25-54, ESPN was the 8th most-used digital property in the U.S.
Additional results from ESPN Research & Analytics:
- Users watched 326.4 million digital video clips on ESPN platforms in September, a record-high number of monthly starts. 77% of clips were viewed on computers, 16% on mobile devices and 6% on connected TVs.1
- Viewers spent 650 million minutes with WatchESPN and ESPN3 live and on-demand programming across all platforms, up 21% from last September.
- ESPN sent 4.1 billion alerts in September, up 70% from a year ago.
ESPN networks and ABC sports television content generated 15.0 million tweets in September, 20% of all TV-related activity during the month. ESPN itself was the No. 5 most-social TV network, with 1.9 million unique users sending 6.9 million tweets about ESPN content.2 Other key social media metrics:
- ESPN had 24.5 million unique fans across all of ESPN’s Facebook pages in September, and counted 25.2 million unique followers across all Twitter accounts.
- 30.6 million people were reached by ESPN page content on Facebook; 27.0 million by SportsCenter page content.
- 2.3 million people engaged with the ESPN Facebook page (liked a post, shared a story, left a comment), and 2.6 million engaged with the SportsCenter page.
- ESPN’s Twitter accounts were retweeted or favorited 5.1 million times during the month, the highest monthly amount to-date in 2013.
- ESPN video content on YouTube received 29.9 million views in September, up 35% from a year ago.