ESPN Digital Media Reaches 97 Million Fans Worldwide in February

Driven by coverage of a wide array of sports around the world – including Super Bowl 50, rugby’s Six Nations Championship, cricket’s Asia Cup, the NBA, College Basketball, the UEFA Champions League, and College Football’s National Signing Day – ESPN reached 97.1 million global unique visitors in February.

ESPN was the most-trafficked sports property in the world for the month, racking up 853 million visits and 5.6 billion minutes of usage – more than the Nos. 2 and 3 sports properties combined (Yahoo Sports/NBC Sports Network, 3.8 billion; Bleacher Report/Turner Sports Network, 1.7 billion). Also, ESPN accounted for 14% of all global sports category time spent on digital platforms, 1.9 billion minutes more than the No. 2 property (Yahoo Sports/NBC Sports Network, 9%).

In the U.S., February marked the 24th consecutive month in which ESPN led the digital sports category for monthly unique visitors, total minutes and visits.

More results from the February comScore U.S. Multiplatform report:

• ESPN’s digital content reached 75.6 million users in the U.S., 42% of all sports category users for the month.

• ESPN.com reached 55.9 million unique visitors across platforms, up +1.4% from a year ago.

• For the second month in a row, the primary election season powered FiveThirtyEight.com to set new site records for monthly unique visitors (8.0 million) and total minutes (63.0 million).

• On mobile devices alone, 61.4 million unique users accessed ESPN web and app content, spending 2.8 billion minutes with ESPN on mobile devices.

• ESPN reached 11.9 million average daily unique users on smartphones, 6.9 million more than No. 2 Bleacher Report-Turner Sports Network (5.0 million).

• 70% of ESPN’s unique users – 53.2 million people – exclusively accessed content on smartphones and tablets.  56% of all time spent with ESPN digital content was consumed by mobile device users.

• ESPN accounted for the top two sports apps on smartphones and tablets in February in terms of unique users, with the ESPN app topping the category (14.95 million) and WatchESPN at No. 2 (9.2 million). The ESPN app also was No. 1 in the sports category for usage, with fans spending 961 million minutes with it during the month.

• ESPN’s portfolio of apps maintained the sports category lead in uniques and minutes, reaching 21.8 million U.S. users in total who generated 1.5 billion minutes of usage.