ComScore Media Metrix Debuts MediaBuilder Tool
- by July 16, 2004
MediaBuilder, according to comScore Media Metrix, offers customizable page- and channel-level detail to analyze Web site audiences' behavior and usage patterns. "Fantasy sports have become an integral component of sports publishers' strategy for good reason," said Peter Daboll, president and CEO of comScore Media Metrix, in a statement. "Aside from the revenue generated from selling advanced functionality, fantasy content draws large numbers of loyal and highly engaged visitors."
MediaBuilder is designed to enable advertisers to better understand audience dynamics at user-defined sections of any major Web site, including page-level detail, and to identify which pages and site sections drove traffic increases or decreases at a particular site, among other analytics.
Meanwhile, comScore's analysis found that an average of 4.7 million Americans per month visited fantasy content at Yahoo! Sports, SportsLine, and ESPN between October and May. On average, these users spent 93 minutes viewing 219 pages of fantasy sports content in a given month. By contrast, the average visitor to online sports venues viewed 107 pages per month for 71 minutes between October and May.
ComScore found that there is a highly seasonal element to visits to fantasy sports sites. With all four major professional sports leagues (MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL) in various stages of their seasons, October was the peak month in terms of audience size. More than 7.4 million Americans, or about 5 percent of all U.S. Internet users, visited the fantasy sports sections of Yahoo! Sports, SportsLine, and ESPN in October.
According to comScore's analysis, February posted the lowest monthly fantasy audience level--2.4 million visitors--but users during this month showed the highest level of usage engagement, as measured by time spent and pages viewed. The average visitor in February spent 128 minutes at the fantasy sports sections of Yahoo! Sports, SportsLine, and ESPN, representing the greatest amount of time during the shortest month of the year. Visitors in February viewed 241 pages of fantasy sports content during the month, the second highest level during the analysis period (May was the highest, with 255 page views per visitor).
Football fans were the most significant contributors to fantasy sports traffic. In October, 81 percent of all fantasy visitors, or more than 6.0 million people, viewed football content. That's more than the 3.1 million people who visited fantasy baseball content in April.
comScore's research found that, on average, fantasy sports content at Yahoo! Sports draws three times the monthly audience of its nearest competitor. An average of more than 3.1 million users per month visited Yahoo! Sports fantasy content during the analysis period, compared to 950,000 visitors to ESPN and 930,000 visitors to SportsLine.
While very closely matched in terms of average monthly audiences, ESPN and SportsLine appear to be disproportionately popular with followers of different sports leagues. During the NFL season, SportsLine drew more fantasy visitors than ESPN (by an average margin of more than 300,000 visitors per month). However, in January, after the end of the NFL regular season, ESPN overtook SportsLine and led by an average margin of more than 200,000 visitors for the next five months. ESPN's lead was especially pronounced in March, as users began configuring fantasy leagues for the start of the baseball season.
Nearly 75 percent of all visitors to fantasy content are male, while more than a third of all fantasy visitors are between the ages of 25 and 34. Taken together, 25- to-34-year-old males are 170 percent more likely to visit fantasy content than the average Internet user. Fantasy visitors are also much more likely to have a household income of $100,000 or more, live in single-person households, and have a higher level of education.
comScore also found that the average fantasy sports user is 26 percent more likely to have a broadband connection than the average at-home Internet user. More than 53 percent of at-home visitors to fantasy content access the Web through a broadband connection, compared to less than 40 percent of total U.S. at-home users.
