ESPN Digital Media in August: 18th Straight Months at No. 1

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27 percent share of sports category is more than Nos. 2 and 3 properties combined; New ESPN.com reaches 61.2 million fans in fifth month after launch.

ESPN Digital Media reached 79.1 million unique visitors in the U.S. in August, topping in the sports category for the 18th straight month. Fans spent 74 minutes per user with ESPN content across platforms, more time than any of the other top properties in the sports category.

Overall, ESPN accounted for 26.8 percent of all sports category usage on digital platforms, more than the Nos. 2 and 3 properties combined (Yahoo! Sports-NBC Sports Network had 13.3 percent, MLB 13.1 percent).

In its fifth month since launch, the new ESPN.com garnered 61.2 million total unique visitors in August. 46.9 million people visited the site via smartphones and tablets, and 64 percent of ESPN.com users exclusively accessed the site on a mobile device.

More results from the August comScore Multi-Platform report:

• 64 million unique users accessed ESPN web and app content on smartphones and tablets, which means more fans accessed ESPN content from mobile devices only than any other sports property attracted across all platforms. ESPN mobile visitors generated 3.6 billion minutes of usage.

• 68 percent of ESPN’s unique users – 54.0 million people – exclusively accessed content on smartphones and tablets. This is the 17th consecutive month that more than half of ESPN’s digital users came only from mobile devices.

• 61 percent of all time spent with ESPN digital content was consumed by mobile device users, the 16th consecutive month that smartphones and tablets contributed a larger share of usage to ESPN’s digital total than desktop and laptop computers.

• ESPN accounted for two of the top three sports apps on smartphones and tablets in August. The ESPN app topped the category for unique visitors (16.4 million), with WatchESPN at No. 3 (5.3 million).

• ESPN’s portfolio of apps generated 2.1 billion minutes of usage, accounting for 30 percent of all time spent with apps in the Sports Category, 51 percent higher than the No. 2 property (MLB, 20 percent).

• ESPN reached 12.1 million people per day via smartphones in August, more than the next two sports properties combined (Yahoo Sports-NBC Sports Network, 4.7 million; Bleacher Report-Turner Sports Network, 4.3 million).

• In the average day in August, ESPN web and app properties were accessed by 4.1 million millennial males (age 18-34) via smartphones. ESPN ranked tenth among the more than 6,000 mobile entities reported by comScore, ahead of Spotify (3.7 million) and Buzzfeed (1.4 million), among many others.

Additional results from ESPN Research & Analytics:

• 7 million unique devices streamed WatchESPN and ESPN3 content in August, as viewers spent 715 million minutes with programming across all platforms.¹

• Fans watched 410.7 million ESPN digital video clips in August across all touch points.¹

• ESPN clips on digital platforms produced 372.1 million views in August, 66 percent on computers, 29 percent on phones and tablets, and five percent on connected TVs.¹

• Continuing to illustrate the remarkably strong appeal of fantasy football, eight of ESPN’s top 10 stories in August were related to fantasy football.¹

¹ Source: Adobe Analytics

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