July Marks 17th Straight Month at No 1 for ESPN Digital Media

31 percent share of sports category is more than Nos. 2 and 3 properties combined; New ESPN.com reaches 54.5 million fans in fourth month after launch; espnW, Grantland continue growth trend with third-most and second-most monthly uniques ever, respectively.

ESPN Digital Media reached 71.6 million unique visitors in the U.S. in July, topping in the sports category for the 17th straight month. Fans spent 82 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 30.5 percent of all sports category usage on digital platforms, more than the Nos. 2 and 3 properties combined (MLB had 13.1 percent, Yahoo! Sports-NBC Sports Network 11.6 percent).

ESPN.com garnered 54.5 million total unique visitors in the fourth month since launch. 41.1 million people visited the site via smartphones and tablets in July, and 67 percent of ESPN.com users exclusively accessed the site on a mobile device.

More results from the July comScore Multi-Platform report:

• espnW continued its run of strong traffic, notching its third-largest monthly unique visitor total ever with 7.4 million, trailing only highs set in April and June of this year.

• Grantland scored its second-highest monthly unique visitor count ever with 7.2 million in July. The site’s three highest monthly unique visitor totals have come in the past three months (No. 1 in May, No. 3 in June).

• 6 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 3.3 billion minutes of usage.

• 67 percent of ESPN’s unique users – 48.2 million people – exclusively accessed content on smartphones and tablets. This is the 16th consecutive month that more than half of ESPN’s digital users came only from mobile devices.

• 56 percent of all time spent with ESPN digital content was consumed by mobile device users, the 15th 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 July. The ESPN app topped the category for unique visitors (16.1 million), with WatchESPN at No. 2 (4.3 million).

• ESPN’s portfolio of apps generated 2.0 billion minutes of usage, accounting for 36 percent of all time spent with apps in the Sports Category, 89 percent higher than the No. 2 property (MLB, 19 percent)

• ESPN reached 10.6 million people per day via smartphones in July, more than the next two sports properties combined (Bleacher Report-Turner Sports Network, 4.5 million; Yahoo Sports-NBC Sports Network, 4.1 million).

• In the average day in July ESPN web and app properties were accessed by 4.4 million millennial males (age 18-34) via smartphones. ESPN ranked ninth among the more than 6,000 mobile entities reported by comScore, ahead of Spotify (3.6 million) and Buzzfeed (1.3 million), among many others.

Additional results from ESPN Research & Analytics:

• 2 million unique devices streamed WatchESPN and ESPN3 content in July, as viewers spent 1.03 billion minutes with programming across all platforms. ¹

• Fans watched 357.3 million ESPN digital video clips in July across all touch points.¹

• 66 percent of all ESPN platform clips (309.3 million) were viewed on computers, 28 percent on phones and tablets, and 6 percent on connected TVs. ¹

• Illustrating the appeal of fantasy football, ESPN’s top story in July was a ranking of the top 300 fantasy football players, which received nearly 3 million views. Three of the top 10 stories on ESPN.com in July were fantasy football related. Meanwhile two stories about Ronda Rousey’s UFC 190 knock-out placed in the top ten and garnered nearly 3.4 million views combined. ¹

• ESPN networks and ABC sports television content generated 6.9 million tweets in July, accounting for nearly 16 percent of all TV-related activity during the month.²

• Two million unique authors wrote tweets about ESPN/ABC Sports content, representing almost one-third of all those tweeting about TV in July. ²

¹ Source: Adobe Analytics
² Source: Nielsen SocialGuide

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Media Contacts:
Kevin Ota, ESPN                      860.766.9581 or kevin.r.ota@espn.com
Kristie Chong Adler, ESPN    646.547.5637 or kristie.chong@espn.com