ESPN Marks Two Full Years Atop ComScore's Monthly Sports Ratings

ESPN in February completed two straight years of leading the U.S. digital sports category in reach with its 24th straight month topping comScore's monthly sports ratings for multiplatform digital reach. But much like February ’15, ESPN last month showed sharp declines from its January metrics as the NFL, college football and fantasy football seasons wound down and the overall sports calendar slowed. Its February totals of 75.6 million unique visitors and 4.9 billion minutes in time spent, while far and away each leading the category, were down 14% and 24%, respectively, from the prior month. Those drops were similar to 21% decreases for ESPN in both reach and consumption between January and February of ’15. CBS, which in January rose to third place for the first time since mobile-based traffic became the dominant share for most category entrants, maintained its ranking last month. But the NFL Internet Group fell from second to eighth with the end of the ’15 football season, similar to its fall from fourth to seventh during the same period last year. ESPN in February also regained a category lead in average minutes spent per visitor from the NBC Sports-Yahoo Sports digital alliance with a total of 64.8.