Digital Bites: NFL Hot Stove Leads to NBC Digital Traffic Records; MLB, NBA, Women’s Tourney Boost ESPN

The extra hot stove of NFL offseason news generated record traffic for NBC Sports Digital properties ProFootballTalk.com, Pro Football Talk Live and Rotoworld in the month of March on NBCSports.com.  ProFootballTalk.com (PFT) with Mike Florio reached its best month ever, logging 8.3 million uniques, 27.2 million visits, and 91.9 million page views, according to Omniture. In addition, PFT broke its own daily record three times within a seven-day period (March 14 – 21). PFT set its all-time high on March 21 with 1.2 million uniques and 1.6 million visits. Pro Football Talk Live (PFT Live), an online NBCSports.com video show hosted by Florio, also had its best month ever with more than 500,000 minutes watched and more than 36,000 viewers tuning into the live start.

NBCSports.com’s Rotoworld fantasy football site has experienced 21 consecutive months of 20%-or-more growth in year-over-year page views and 15 percent-or-more growth in year-over-year unique visitors. In March, Rotoworld notched 3.8 million unique visitors (up 85% over March 2011), 92 million page views (up 66%), and 13.9 million visits (up 60%)…

…ESPN’s digital platforms, ESPN3 and WatchESPN, also posted double-digit growth during the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship, with a 16% increase in viewership on ESPN3 compared to 2011. In addition, espnW.com logged an average of 300,000 daily unique visitors during the game…

…Wednesday’s Oklahoma City/Miami Heat game on ESPN3 and WatchESPN across all platforms – computer, smartphone, tablet and Xbox – generated 6.1 million minutes, second only this NBA season to the Lakers vs. Knicks game February 10.  It was also the second best game of the season on computers in terms of unique viewers and minutes…

…ESPNRadio.com announced that the site logged its best month ever in March since it first launched 11 years ago, with nearly 1.51 million page views from users listening between 30-60 minutes of digital audio through the ESPN Audio NOW Player. That marks an increase of more than six times (up 511%) over the same month last year. The site also generated more than 3.22 million unique visitors (up 11%) and nearly 27 million total page views (up 36%)…

…Email marketing company ExactTarget says that 2,065,060 NCAA Tournament-related tweets were posted between March 15 and April 2. “Final Four” was the top trending phrase with 466,492 tweets, and ESPN’s SportsCenter Twitter account scored the most popular tweet of the tourney. According to Twitter, people sent more than 30,000 tweets per minute after the championship game wrapped up.