ESPN Social Hits 1 Billion Views in July with Spike in Video Views
Tuesday 6 August, 2019, New York, NY: The latest ranking of social activity across Sport Media released today by Shareablee shows more than 1.1 billion video views were recorded across ESPN properties in July.
It's the first time the 1 billion mark has been surpassed in this category of the national Power Rankings compiled by Shareablee: the Top 10 US Sports Media Rankings.
ESPN also recorded the highest number of shares at 6.8 million.
The top video content for ESPN was footage of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady jumping off a cliff into water with his daughter, attracting more than 47 million views followed by a clip of a Mariners baseball fan holding his daughter while seated in the stands at a game and taking a catch with the other hand, which attracted more than 45 million views. Bleacher Report recorded more than 400 million actions, a growth of 100% on its video views on the previous month with 518 million video views and 6.6 million shares across July.
Bleacher Report account for the highest percentage of Branded Content in July, with 67% of the combined branded content by the Top 10 Sports Media properties on Instagram and 37% on Facebook.
Barstool Sports, Overtime Sports and Slam Media each rose one place in the rankings. Overtime Sports was notable in recording almost 9 times the national average in the Actions to Fans Index category while Ballislife recorded 5 times the average and the Score recorded more than 3 times the average.
Shareablee CEO Tania Yuki said together ESPN and Bleacher Report accounted for 50% of all Branded Content actions on Facebook in the US in July in the Sports Media category.
"Incredibly, the Top 10 US Sport Media networks accounted for 98% of all Branded Content actions on Facebook in the sports media category in the US over the month," Ms Yuki said.
"Behind these strong actions among the top performers, is the story about a move towards quality and consistent engagement and away from the focus on vanity metrics," Ms Yuki said.
"That is great for confidence in social as an industry and great for those brands who are making each piece of content work harder for their audience."
