ESPN Rides NFL, College Football, NBA, and Election to Historic Digital Traffic in November

Driven by ESPN Fantasy Football and coverage of the NFL, College Football and NBA, as well as FiveThirtyEight’s coverage of the Presidential Election, ESPN reached 101.8 million unique visitors in the U.S. in November, the second-largest total ever for ESPN and up 13% over the same month a year ago. ESPN had 34.5 million more monthly unique visitors than No. 2 property CBS Sports, the largest margin of leadership in sports category history.

Fans spent 9.3 billion minutes using ESPN digital properties, more than double the No. 2 property (Yahoo Sports-NBC Sports Network, 4.4 billion) and more than the Nos. 2, 3 and 4 properties combined (No. 3 NFL Internet Group, 2.4 billion; No. 4 CBS Sports, 1.8 billion).

ESPN reached 20.3 million users daily on smartphones, the second-largest total ever in the U.S. sports category and a mere 34 fewer daily users than last month’s all-time high. ESPN reached 13.5 million more daily smartphone users than No. 2 property Yahoo Sports-NBC Sports Network (6.7 million). Also, ESPN led the sports category for daily unique fans on desktop (6.1 million) and tablet (1.9 million), as well.

ESPN delivered an average minute audience of 215,000. This was more than double the No. 2 digital sports property (Yahoo Sports-NBC Sports Network, 101,000).

ESPN accounted for 33.4 percent of all sports category usage on digital platforms, more than the Nos. 2, 3 and 4 properties combined (Yahoo! Sports-NBC Sports Network, 15.7 percent; NFL Internet Group, 8.6 percent; CBS Sports 6.6%). ESPN’s sports category share was up 4.1 percentage points from its share in November 2015.

In terms of the U.S. media landscape overall, results from the November comScore Multi-Platform report include:

• ESPN reached 40 percent of all U.S. internet users in November.
• ESPN was a top U.S. digital property on key performance indicators, including total monthly unique visitors (ranked 21st out of the more than 25,000 properties comScore measured), daily smartphone unique visitors (8th), total minutes (16th) and average minute audience (16th).
• ESPN reached 7.5 million millennial males (age 18-34) on smartphones daily, ranking 5th among all U.S. digital properties. On that demographic, ESPN beat leading properties including Spotify (5.1 million), Pandora (5.4 million), Amazon (4.8 million) and Twitter (4.2 million).
• FiveThirtyEight.com shattered its prior site record (14.9 million in October 2016) with 20.9 million monthly unique visitors in November.

In the U.S. sports category specifically:

• ESPN reached 56 percent of all sports category users.
• ESPN’s 91.2 minutes per visitor was the highest among the top 10 sports category properties.
• ESPN.com reached 73.4 million unique visitors across platforms over the course of the month, making it the largest single entity, website or app, in the sports category.
• On mobile devices alone, 83.9 million unique users accessed ESPN content, tops in the category by 28.9 million (CBS Sports, 55.0 million) and the second largest mobile total in category history. Users spent 6.6 billion minutes with ESPN on mobile devices.
• 70 percent of ESPN’s unique users – 71.3 million people – exclusively accessed content on smartphones and tablets. 71 percent of all time spent with ESPN digital content was consumed by mobile device users.
• For the 10th consecutive month ESPN had the top 2 apps in the sports category in terms of monthly unique visitors. The ESPN App was No. 1 in the sports category for monthly unique users (15.5 million) and No. 2 for total minutes (1.3 billion). The ESPN Fantasy App was No. 1 in total minutes in sports category (2.4 billion) and No. 2 for monthly unique users (12.2 million).
• ESPN’s portfolio of apps reached 30.6 million unique visitors and generated 4.7 billion minutes of usage, more than any other sports media property. ESPN garnered 40 percent of all U.S. sports app usage.

Additional results from ESPN Fan & Media Intelligence:

• Fans watched 461.6 million ESPN on-platform digital video clips in November, ESPN’s third-largest monthly total ever and up 7 percent from a year ago.  Also, ESPN collected 194.5 million video views on mobile platforms, an all-time record and up 36 percent year-over-year.¹
• 11.2 million unique devices streamed WatchESPN content in November, up 13 percent from a year ago. Viewers spent 2.5 billion minutes with ESPN programming across all platforms (up 21 percent).