ESPN’s Audience Is High On Shorts, Low On Watch-Time

ESPN was able to grow its unique U.S. YouTube viewers by 25% month-over-month in July, to 38.8 million – according to data from Tubular Labs. However, the sports giant is not growing audience on the back of longer-form videos. It’s primarily on Shorts.

• In July alone, 66% of ESPN’s uploads were under a minute long, and fewer than 70 videos (out of over 1,300) were longer than 20 minutes.
• Overwhelmingly, though, tune-in centered around Shorts. ESPN’s average minutes watched per unique U.S. viewer was just six minutes; lowest among the top 100 U.S. media & entertainment publishers. But ESPN was also No. 4 among U.S. media & entertainment publishers by unique domestic viewers.

The strategy helps ESPN grow its footprint among sports fans, cut down on production time and maximize its uploads in a way that keeps it in constant conversation with what’s happening in sports. It’s also reach that ESPN can use to scale as it launches its standalone streaming service (and the full details of the app show that vertical videos will be a focus there, too).