Yahoo Sports in October returned to the top of the comScore reach rankings of U.S. sports sites after losing the No.1 overall spot in September for just the second time in four years. Yahoo led the list with 45.5 million unique visitors, followed closely by ESPN with 44.4 million uniques. The rest of the October list rankings essentially held steady from September as many sports sites see some of their largest traffic of the year, fueled in part by interest in football, postseason baseball and the beginning of the NBA season. ESPN easily led all sites in the category in engagement metrics with an average of 87.8 minutes per visitor during the month, and 3.9 billion minutes of consumption overall. The latter figure is the fifth best ever for ESPN.
| RANK | SITE | UNIQUE VISITORS
(000) |
| 1) | Yahoo Sports* | 45,526 |
| 2) | ESPN | 44,443 |
| 3) | FoxSports.com on MSN | 37,030 |
| 4) | NFL Internet Group | 24,686 |
| 5) | USA Today Sports Media Group** | 23,186 |
| 6) | CBS Sports | 21,206 |
| 7) | Turner Sports Digital*** | 20,258 |
| 8) | MLB | 14,489 |
| 9) | NBC Sports^ | 11,815 |
| 10) | Sports Illustrated sites | 10,703 |
| 11) | SB Nation | 9,422 |
| 12) | Sporting News on AOL | 8,982 |
| 13) | Active.com sites | 6,193 |
| 14) | Big Lead Sports by FSV | 5,101 |
| 15) | JumpTV/NeuLion | 4,657 |
NOTES: All numbers do not include wireless traffic. * = Includes Rivals.com and ThePostGame.com. **= Sites include 81 local Gannett newspaper sites, 23 Gannett-owned broadcast TV station sites, USA Today High School Sports and BNQT Media Group. *** = Sites include Bleacher Report, NBA.com, PGATour.com, PGA.com, NCAA.com, and WNBA.com. ^ = Includes NHL.com.
