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29 percent share of sports category is more than Nos. 2 and 3 properties combined; ESPN’s last 11 monthly unique visitor totals are the 11 biggest months in sports category history; New ESPN.com reaches 55 million people, up 19 percent in first month of relaunch.
ESPN Digital Media reached 75.5 million unique visitors in the U.S., up 14 percent from a year ago and the ninth-largest monthly total in sports category history. Across digital platforms fans spent 5.7 billion minutes with ESPN content, a sports category record for the month of April and up seven percent from a year ago.
ESPN now owns the top 11 monthly unique visitor totals in sports category history – June 2014 through April 2015.
The new ESPN.com, launched April 1, garnered 55.2 million unique visitors for the month, up 19 percent from a year ago, while 39.9 million people visited ESPN.com via smartphones and tablets, an increase of 24 percent from April 2014.
Overall, ESPN accounted for 29.0 percent of all sports category usage on digital platforms, more than the Nos. 2 and 3 properties combined (MLB had 14.7 percent, Yahoo! Sports-NBC Sports Network 13.7 percent).
More results from the April comScore Multi-Platform report:
- On mobile devices alone, 59.4 million unique users accessed ESPN web and app content, an increase of 9.8 million over a year ago. ESPN mobile visitors generated 3.3 billion minutes of usage, up 26 percent.
- 64 percent of ESPN’s unique users – 48.6 million people – exclusively accessed content on smartphones and tablets. This is the 13th consecutive month that more than half of ESPN’s digital users came only from mobile devices.
- 57 percent of all time spent with ESPN digital content was consumed by mobile device users, the 12th 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 the top two sports apps on smartphones and tablets in April. The ESPN app topped the category for unique visitors (13.9 million), with WatchESPN at No. 2 (5.6 million).
- ESPN’s portfolio of apps generated 1.7 billion minutes of usage, accounting for 28 percent of all time spent with apps in the Sports Category.
- espnW and Grantland set all-time highs in monthly unique visitors with 8.1 million and 6.7 million respectively, while FiveThirtyEight notched its second-highest total ever with 4.9 million.
- In the average day in April, ESPN web and app properties were accessed by 5.7 million millennial males (age 18-34) via smartphones. ESPN ranked seventh among the more than 6,000 mobile entities reported by comScore, ahead of Twitter (4.1 million) and Buzzfeed (989,000), among many others.
Additional results from ESPN Research & Analytics:
- 8 million unique devices streamed WatchESPN and ESPN3 content in April (up 49 percent from a year ago), as viewers spent 859 million minutes with programming across all platforms (up 78 percent).1
- ESPN3 was the second most-streamed network on the WatchESPN platform (trailing only ESPN) racking up 160 million minutes of viewing.1
- Fans watched 375.0 million ESPN digital video clips in April across all touch points, up four percent from a year ago.1
- 67 percent of all ESPN platform clips (338.3 million) were viewed on computers, 28 percent on phones and tablets, and 6 percent on connected TVs.1
- ESPN’s top piece of content in April was Jane McManus’s “The tragic love story of Christy Mack and MMA fighter War Machine”, which received 4.2 million views.1
- ESPN networks and ABC sports television content generated 10.7 million tweets in April, accounting for 16 percent of all TV-related activity during the month.2
Other key social media metrics:
- 3 million unique authors wrote tweets about ESPN/ABC Sports content, representing nearly 30 percent of those tweeting about TV in April. 2
- With 1.8 million unique authors and 7.7 million TV-related tweets, ESPN was the No. 1 most social network for the month (broadcast or cable) based on total tweets, total unique authors, and daily unique Twitter audience (4.2 million per day).2
- ESPN’s top Twitter accounts were retweeted or favorited 11.9 million times, up 11 percent from a year ago. ESPN’s Twitter accounts have 50 million unduplicated followers.3
- ESPN’s top Instagram accounts generated 31 million engagements, a 19 percent increase from March.4
1 Source: Adobe Analytics
2 Source: Nielsen SocialGuide
3 Source: Twitter
4 Source: Instagram
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