56.5 million unique visitors in February up 26% YOY; 480.9 million minutes on WatchESPN and ESPN3 up 77% YOY; 37.8 million fans on ESPN mobile for 2.0 billion minutes, both No. 1 in sports category
In a month that included high levels of Olympics-related content consumption, ESPN was second in February in the digital sports category for unique visitors (56.5 million), total minutes of usage (4.2 billion) and average minute audience (103,993), while maintaining its lead in total visits (438.4 million). In the 18 months since comScore’s Multi-Platform data has been available, February was the first month in which ESPN did not lead the sports category in total minutes of usage and average minute audience.
However, ESPN’s 56.5 million unique visitors in February was up 26% from a year ago, while ESPN’s 4.2 billion minutes of usage was up 11%. ESPN accounted for 24.7% of all sports category usage on digital platforms and garnered 32.2% of mobile sports usage to remain No. 1 on that platform. Also, 37.8 million people used ESPN mobile properties for 2.0 billion minutes in February, both No. 1 in the sports category.
In addition, 43% of ESPN’s unique users – 24.5 million people – exclusively accessed content on smartphones and tablets, and 48% of all time spent with ESPN digital content came from mobile device users. A year ago 32% of ESPN’s unique users were exclusive to mobile platforms and 37% of all time spent came from mobile device users.
Additional results from the February comScore Multi-Platform report:
- February marked the 6th consecutive month in which more unique people accessed ESPN content on mobile devices than on computers (32.0 million).
- The 74.2 minutes per user spent with ESPN digital properties (such as ESPN.com, WatchESPN and the SportsCenter app) during February was second among the top 115 entities in the sports category.
- In the average minute throughout February, 103,993 people used ESPN digital properties on computers, smartphones and tablets. Among men 18-49 and men 25-54, ESPN was the 10th and 8th most-used digital property in the U.S., respectively.
Additional results from ESPN Research and Analytics:
- Fans watched 260.6 million digital video clips on ESPN platforms in February, up 26% from a year ago. February marked ESPN’s sixth consecutive month with more than 25% year-to-year growth. 71% of clips were viewed on computers, 21% on mobile devices and 6% on connected TVs.1
- Viewers spent 480.9 million minutes with WatchESPN and ESPN3 live and on-demand programming across all platforms, up 77% from last February.1
ESPN networks and ABC sports television content generated 12.2 million tweets in February, accounting for 13% of all TV-related activity during the month. ESPN itself was the No. 3 most-social TV network, with 1.7 million unique users sending 7.0 million tweets about ESPN content.2 Other key social media metrics:
- ESPN counted nearly 29 million unduplicated unique followers across all Twitter accounts in February.
- ESPN’s Twitter accounts were retweeted or favorited 8.8 million times during February.3
- ESPN counted 30 million unduplicated unique fans across its various Facebook pages in February. 40 million people in total were reached by ESPN page content on Facebook; 34 million by SportsCenter page content.3
- 4.3 million people engaged with the ESPN Facebook page (liked a post, shared a story, left a comment), and 5.6 million also engaged with the SportsCenter page.4
- ESPN videos were viewed 38.3 million times on YouTube, up 66% from a year ago. 5
1 Source: Adobe Analytics
2 Source: Nielsen SocialGuide
3 Source: Twitter
4 Source: Facebook
5 Source: YouTube
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