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Business of TV Sport
Sportel Monaco 2011

Fifa World Cup gives ESPN record internet and mobile figures

US sports broadcaster ESPN said that viewers spent 4.9 billion minutes watching the Fifa World Cup finals across all of its digital media platforms – ESPN.com, ESPN3.com, ESPN Mobile Web, ESPN Mobile Apps and ESPN Mobile TV.
ESPN said that the World Cup had been “a truly breakout event” for its broadband network ESPN3. The service generated 942 million minutes of World Cup viewing, with matches watched by 7.4 million unique viewers. The 64 live matches were viewed by an average of 114,000 people per minute, with the website attracting its largest-ever live audience of 355,000 people per minute for the semi-final between Spain and Germany.

While not strictly focused on the World Cup, ESPN.com had 128 million visits and 431 million page views during the tournament. ESPN.com also had 54 million video starts for World Cup coverage, more streams than for any other content over the tournament.

One million unique viewers used ESPN’s mobile TV, registering 93 million minutes of viewing, and setting viewing records on major mobile TV platforms MobiTV and FLO TV. In total, World Cup content on ESPN’s mobile offerings generated 98 million visits and 520 million page views.