37 percent share of sports category, more than Nos. 2, 3 and 4 properties combined;
400+ million video views for seventh consecutive month;
Fifth time in six months with more than 1 billion minutes of streaming on WatchESPN;
ESPN owns the top 6 all-time months for total unique visitors in sports category history.
ESPN Fantasy Football and coverage of the NFL, College Football and NBA regular season continued to drive sports fans to ESPN Digital Media in November, reaching 90.8 million unique visitors in the U.S., up 33 percent from a year ago. November marked the second-largest monthly total in sports category history, trailing only ESPN’s record-setting 94.0 million in September and was an all-time high for the month of November. ESPN’s last six months now comprise the top six monthly unique visitor totals in sports category history.
ESPN reached 25.9 million people in the U.S. daily across devices in November, up from 17.9 million a year ago and more than the Nos. 2 and 3 sports properties combined (Yahoo Sports-NBC Sports Network at 13.0 million, NFL Internet Group at 10.1 million). 29 percent of ESPN’s total monthly users visited the property on a daily basis, a higher daily return rate than any of the top sports category properties.
59 percent of ESPN’s unique users – 53.4 million people – exclusively accessed content on smartphones and tablets. This is the eighth consecutive month in which more than half of ESPN’s digital users came only from mobile devices.
Fans spent 9.6 billion minutes using ESPN digital properties, up 24 percent from a year ago, and also a sports category record for the month of November. Overall, ESPN accounted for 37.4 percent of all sports category usage on digital platforms, more than the Nos. 2, 3 and 4 properties combined (Yahoo! Sports-NBC Sports Network had 15.1 percent, NFL Internet Group 9.7 percent, CBS Sports 6.4 percent).
More results from the November comScore Multi-Platform report:
- ESPN reached 22.7 million millennial male unique visitors (males aged 18-34), ranked 11th among the nearly 18,000 U.S. digital properties reported by comScore. ESPN ranked ahead of properties such as Wikimedia (20.7 million), Pandora (17.5 million), Twitter (17.4 million), Gawker Media (15.6 million), Buzzfeed (14.2 million), and Vice Media (10.0 million) among others.
- Among males 18-34, ESPN’s average minute audience was 47,575, more than the TV viewership of Fox Sports 1 (16,130) and NBC Sports Network (14,006), combined.1
- 9 million people used ESPN.com across devices, up 18 percent from a year ago, with 46.8 million people visiting ESPN.com via smartphones and tablets.
- 65 percent of all time spent with ESPN digital content was consumed by mobile device users, the seventh 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 three of the top four sports apps on smartphones and tablets in November. ESPN’s SportsCenter app topped the category for unique visitors (14.7 million), accompanied by No. 3 ESPN Fantasy Football (7.1 million) and No. 4 WatchESPN (7.0 million).
- In terms of total minutes the ESPN Fantasy Football app led the category with 1.1 billion minutes of usage, followed by the ESPN SportsCenter app (976 million) at No. 2.
- ESPN’s portfolio of apps generated 4.0 billion minutes of usage, four times more than any other sports property.
Additional results from ESPN Research & Analytics:
- 2 million unique devices streamed WatchESPN and ESPN3 content in November (up 35 percent from a year ago), as viewers spent 1.3 billion minutes with programming across all platforms (up 77 percent).2
- November marked the fifth time in the past six months in which WatchESPN surpassed one billion minutes of streaming.2
- ESPN3 was the second most-streamed network on the WatchESPN platform (trailing only ESPN) racking up 347.1 million minutes of viewing (up 23 percent year-over-year).2
- Fans watched 434.8 million ESPN digital video clips in November across all touch points, up 9 percent from a year ago. November marked the seventh straight month ESPN saw more than 400 million clips viewed.2
- 136 million video clip views came from mobile phones, a new record.2
- 63 percent of all ESPN platform clips were viewed on computers, 29 percent on phones and tablets, and 7 percent on connected TVs.2
ESPN networks and ABC sports television content generated 18.6 million tweets in November, accounting for 20 percent of all TV-related activity during the month.3 Other key social media metrics:
- ESPN’s top Twitter accounts were retweeted or favorited 11.6 million times. ESPN’s Twitter accounts have 41 million unique followers.4
- November ended with the ESPN Facebook page counting 13.5 million fans, while the SportsCenter page totaled 11.2 million fans. ESPN maintains 10 pages that each have more than 2 million fans.5
1 Source: Nielsen Media Research, 11/1-11/30/14
2 Source: Adobe Analytics
3 Source: Nielsen Social Guide
4 Source: Twitter
5 Source: Facebook
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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
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