ESPN Digital Starts 2016 with 88 Million U.S. Fans In January

Driven by a wide array of sports coverage in January - including NFL playoffs, COLLEGE FOOTBALL Championship, NBA, College Basketball and Australian Open Tennis - ESPN reached 88.1 million unique visitors in the U.S., the ninth largest total of all-time in the sports category. ESPN owns the entire top 10, and 18 of the top 20 all-time monthly unique visitor totals in the sports category.

Fans spent 6.5 billion minutes using ESPN digital properties in January, and ESPN accounted for 28.6 percent of all sports category time spent on digital platforms, 50 percent more than the No. 2 property and a 2.2 billion minute advantage.

ESPN attracted 884 million total visits to its digital products - more than the Nos. 2 and 3 sports properties combined.

More results from the January comScore Multi-Platform report:

January marked the 23rd straight month in which ESPN led the sports category for monthly unique visitors and total minutes.

ESPN.com reached 66.8 million unique visitors across platforms over the course of the month.

As interest in the Presidential primaries heated up, FiveThirtyEight.com set new site records for monthly unique visitors (7.6 million), total minutes (34.5 million) and visits (17.5 million).

On mobile devices alone, 72.4 million unique users accessed ESPN web and app content, and users spent 3.9 billion minutes with ESPN on mobile devices.

ESPN reached 14.3 million average daily unique users on smartphones, 8.3 million more than No. 2 NFL Internet Group (6.0 million).

70 percent of ESPN's unique users - 62.0 million people - exclusively accessed content on smartphones and tablets. 61 percent of all time spent with ESPN digital content was consumed on mobile device users.

ESPN accounted for three of the top four sports apps on smartphones and tablets in January in terms of unique users, with the ESPN app topping the category (16.8 million), accompanied by No. 2 WatchESPN (11.4 million) and No. 4 ESPN Fantasy Football (4.3 million). The ESPN app also was No. 1 in the sports category in terms of usage, with fans spending 1.3 billion minutes with the app during the month.

ESPN's portfolio of apps maintained the sports category lead in unique users and minutes, reaching 27.6 million U.S. users in total and generating 2.2 billion minutes of usage.

Image courtesy of ESPN Press

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