49 million uniques on mobile set a new sports category record; 69 million uniques overall is second highest all-time; 824 million total visits is most-ever for sports property in March

During a month in which a record-setting 11 million brackets were entered in ESPN’s men’s basketball Tournament Challenge, ESPN was No. 1 across all key audience metrics in the digital sports category.  ESPN reached 68.5 million unique users in March, the second most ever in the sports category, trailing only ESPN’s all-time high of 72.7 million in September 2013.  Also, ESPN’s 49 million unique users on smartphones and tablets set a category record for mobile reach, while ESPN’s unique visitor count, fueled by the record-setting mobile performance, was up 25% over last year.

Sports fans spent 5.9 billion minutes using ESPN digital properties in March, a category record for the month and an increase of 6% over 2013.  ESPN accounted for 31% of all sports category usage on digital platforms, more than the Nos. 2 and 3 properties combined (Bleacher Report-Turner Sports Network had 14%, Yahoo! Sports-NBC Sports Network 13%).

Additional results from the March comScore Multi-Platform report:

• 71% of ESPN’s users accessed content on mobile devices, generating 2.7 billion minutes of usage.  March was the seventh consecutive month in which more unique people visited ESPN on smartphones and tablets (49.0 million) than on desktop and laptop computers (36.8 million uniques, 3.2 billion minutes).

• 46% of ESPN’s unique users – 31.7 million people – exclusively accessed content on smartphones and tablets, and 46% of all time spent with ESPN digital content came from mobile device users.

• The 86.2 minutes per user spent with ESPN digital properties during March was more than any of the top 95 sports category entities.

• In the average minute throughout March, 132,346 people used ESPN digital properties on computers, smartphones and tablets. Among men 18-49, ESPN was the eighth most-used digital property in the U.S. during the month.

Additional results from ESPN Research and Analytics:

• Fans watched 267.4 million digital video clips on ESPN platforms in March, up 5% from a year ago and the 10th straight month of year-over-year growth.  72% of clips were viewed on computers, 21% on mobile devices and 7% on connected TVs.¹

• Viewers spent 708.8 million minutes with WatchESPN and ESPN3 live and on-demand programming across all platforms, up 100% from March 2013.  4.6 million unique devices streamed WatchESPN and ESPN3 content.¹

ESPN networks and ABC sports television content generated 13.5 million tweets in March, accounting for 15% of all TV-related activity during the month.  ESPN itself was the third most-social TV network (broadcast or cable) with 1.7 million unique users sending 6.7 million tweets about ESPN content.² Other key social media metrics:

• ESPN counted nearly 30 million unique followers across Twitter accounts in March, and had more than 30 million unique fans across ESPN Facebook pages.

• ESPN’s Twitter accounts were retweeted or favorited 10 million times, up 4% from February.³

• 34 million people were reached by the ESPN page content on Facebook; 30 million by SportsCenter page content.⁴

• 3.8 million people engaged with the ESPN Facebook page (liked a post, shared a story, left a comment), and 3.9 million also engaged with the SportsCenter page.⁴

• ESPN videos were viewed 25.3 million times on YouTube. ⁵

 

¹ Source: Adobe Analytics

² Source: Nielsen SocialGuide

³ Source: Twitter

⁴ Source: Facebook

⁵ Source: YouTube