Youth Sports Nets Larger Audience For SportsCenter

ESPN’s getting a larger audience with sister channel SportsCenter Next lately. According to new Tubular Labs data, the youth sports-focused feed has become a one-stop shop for more amateur sports highlights as SportsCenter Next’s unique U.S. audience (across Facebook and YouTube) nearly doubled SportsCenter’s last month.

• Over 87% of uploads in April 2024 were 60 seconds or less as the publisher primarily reshares shorts and Instagram stories
• The emphasis on shorts helps build its 10 million unique U.S. viewers, but even with the shorter content, the highlights are largely evergreen – leading to a lot of watch-time. The channel nearly doubled U.S. watch-time month-over-month in April, though interestingly, the average viewer watches just a minute of content per month.
• Among the bigger videos for SportsCenter Next in April were track and field related. One dad racing his son scored over 15 million views, while another around a hurdling injury picked up over 11 million views.
• Those videos and others helped fuel a rise to the No. 10 U.S. unique audience across YouTube and Facebook for all domestic sports media creators.