Shareablee Ranks Top 10 Sports Media Brands in June 2016

ESPN tops Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to finish No. 1
Sports media brands 16% month-to-month engagement growth

Shareablee today released a June 2016 ranking of the most socially-engaged sports media brands in the U.S. The ranking, which includes all sports-related media properties’ main flagship pages and ancillary pages, reflects a total of nearly 313 million social actions on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (excluding views). This represents a 16 percent increase month over month, compared with a 5 percent decline in May. Sports publishers generated 2% month-over-month engagement increase in video content, which accounted for 28 percent of total social actions in June. Sports media brands accounted for 5 percent of all social actions taken on content published by U.S. brands in June, up from 4 percent in May.

ESPN ranked number one overall with 144.1 million total social actions, generating the most engagement of any sports media publisher on Facebook (35.6 million actions), Twitter (13 million actions) and Instagram (94.5 million). That total represents a 17 percent overall engagement increase in June, spurred by growth on all three platforms. ESPN growth was driven by 9 percent increase in video actions and 60 percent increase in amplification (the sum of shares and retweets).

Bleacher Report generated the most Facebook video actions with nearly 9.2 million, a 39 percent increase over May. FOX Sports was the most-engaged sports media publisher on YouTube with 266,000 actions, more than doubling its total from May. Among the Top 10, NBA.com experienced the most growth compared with May. It generated 32 percent more engagement, driven by a 33 percent increase in Facebook actions. Like the rest of the publishers in the Top 10, NBA.com benefited from 7-game, down-to-the-last-shot NBA Finals.



i Total actions metric includes the total volume of post-level likes, shares, retweets, and comments for all properties under each brand across platforms.
ii Total fans/followers metric includes fans, followers and subscribers for all properties under each brand as of June 30, 2016.
iii Percent of Engagement from video metric is the percentage of total actions that were brought in by video posts and tweets across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
iv The percent change in actions metric calculates the growth or decline in total actions in June 2016 compared to May 2016.

Other notable findings include:

• The Top Five Sports Media Brands ranked by video engagement: ESPN (33 million actions), Bleacher Report (25.2 million actions), Turner Sports (7.5 million actions), FOX Sports (7.2 million actions) and The Enthusiast Network (3.8 million actions)
• The Top Five Sports Media Brands on Facebook: ESPN (36.6 million actions), FOX Sports (23.7 million actions), Bleacher Report (18.6 million actions), Turner Sports (11.5 million actions) and CBS Sports (6.8 million actions)
• The Top Five Sports Media Brands on Twitter: ESPN (13 million actions), Bleacher Report (5.5 million actions), FOX Sports (1.7 million actions), Turner Sports (1.1 million) and Barstool Sports (658,000 actions)
• The Top Five Sports Media Brands on Instagram: ESPN (94.5 million actions), Bleacher Report (25 million actions), The Enthusiast Network (12.46 million actions), Turner Sports (12.45 million actions) and beIN Media Group (4.7 million actions)

For more sports industry social insights, check out Shareablee's State of Social: Sports ebook.