BRISTOL, CONN.—ESPN Digital Media said 2016 was a banner year. For the full calendar year, the platform was said to have reached an average of “112.1 million unique fans globally each month, ESPN’s largest total ever and up 5 percent over 2015. ESPN’s average monthly unique visitor total was 20.4 million more than the the No. 2 sports property—Yahoo Sports-NBC Sports Network, 91.7 million.”
On average, site visitors spent 7.9 billion minutes using ESPN digital properties globally, 3.0 billion more than No. 2 Yahoo Sports-NBC Sports Network, with 4.9 billion, ESPN said. Other platform metrics provided by ESPN:
- Throughout the calendar year, fans visited ESPN digital products more than 10 billion times and spent 84.3 billion minutes with ESPN digital content.
- ESPN delivered an average minute audience of 160,000 in the U.S. in 2016l, versus Yahoo Sports-NBC Sports Network with 90,000 and MLB with 38,000.
- ESPN accounted for 29.9 percent of all sports category usage on digital platforms compared to Yahoo! Sports-NBC Sports Network with 16.9 percent and MLB with 7.1 percent.
- ESPN reached 48 percent of all monthly U.S. sports category users in 2016 and 34 percent of all monthly U.S. internet users regardless of category.
- The ESPN App was No. 1 in the U.S. sports category for monthly unique visitors in every month of 2016.
- ESPN’s portfolio of apps reached 25.1 million monthly unique visitors and generated 34.3 billion minutes of usage throughout the year, more than any other sports media property.
- ESPN garnered 33 percent of all U.S. sports app usage.
- Fans watched 4.9 billion on-platform digital video clips on ESPN platforms in 2016, up 9 percent from a year ago. ESPN saw 1.7 billion video views on phones, up 42 percent year-over-year.1
- An average of 8.3 million unique viewers streamed ESPN content monthly in 2016, up 24 percent from a year ago. Viewers spent a total of 22.5 billion minutes streaming ESPN programming across all platforms during the year, up 44 percent.1
