Sky Sports is the UK’s most popular sports news website, according to an updated ranking by Press Gazette.
In May, 6.9 million people (14% of internet users aged over 15 in the UK) visited Sky Sports, according to data from Ipsos iris. In addition to its coverage of live sports, Sky Sports’ website and apps cover news on football, golf, rugby, boxing and Formula 1. It’s a high position in the ranking may also reflect the fact that many users will use it to stream lives sport.
The second-most popular was social media-focused publisher Sportbible, owned by Manchester-based Ladbible group (2.6 million visitors, 5% reach). Like the company’s flagship brand, Ladbible, Sportbible has a sizeable following on social media, with 5.9 million followers on Tiktok and 13 million on Facebook.
BBC Sport is not included as it does not have a standalone URL but exists within bbc.co.uk, meaning we cannot capture the sport-only data. Similarly, the sports sections of mainstream news brands do not make the list for the same reason.
Most popular sports news websites in the UK (monthly UK audience):
- Sky Sports (6.9 million)
- Sportbible (2.6 million)
- ESPN (2.4 million)
- Teamtalk (1.7 million)
- Goal (1.5 million)
- Football365 (1.2 million)
- Football London (1.2 million)
- Give Me Sport (1.1 million)
- Sportskeeda (1.1 million)
- Transfermarkt (1 million)
Sportbible was followed by the digital properties of US cable sports broadcaster ESPN (2.4 million people, 5% reach) and four football-focused sites – Teamtalk (1.7 million people, 3% reach), Goal (1.5 million, 3% reach), Football365 (1.2 million people, 2% reach) and Reach’s Football London that reports on the capital’s teams (1.2 million people, 2% reach).
Reach, which in recent years has invested in its sports coverage, had two specialist football sites in the top 25. Football Scotland, dedicated to the sport in Scotland, was ranked 22nd (397,954 visitors, 1% reach).
Four sporting brands from the special interest magazine and digital publisher Future are featured in the ranking. These were the football title Four Four Two (821,323 people), Cycling Weekly (593,581 people), Horse and Hound (498,295) and Cycling News (487,011).
Press Gazette used the Ipsos iris ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the biggest which, in our view, mainly cover sports. This excludes the websites of individual clubs and sports associations and leagues such as the Premier League, Formula 1 and UEFA.
A number of overseas sports brands also made the ranking, including New York Times subscription sports site The Athletic (737,909 visitors) and Germany-based football news site Transfermarkt, which is owned by Axel Springer (1 million visitors).
Two Formula 1 news sites took the top spots for fastest-growing year-on-year: GP Fans (up 223%) and Formula1News.co.uk (up 119%). The next four spots were occupied by football news brands Goal (up 119% year-on-year), Teamtalk (up 84%), Football 365 (63%) and Football League World (58%).
Sky Sports and ESPN, two broadcasters where subscribers can watch live sport broadcasts, were among the top three brands for total time spent with their content (316.1 million minutes and 36.5 million minutes respectively). Sportbible, however, was second-best ranked on this metric with audiences spending 44.3 million minutes with the brand.
Sky Sports was also far ahead on page views (112.8 million) with Sportbible in second place (38.5 million).
Nine brands on our list achieved more than 100% year-on-year growth in total time spent. These were GP Fans (up 419%), Formula1News.co.uk (up 246%), Football 365 (up 259% year-on-year), Autosport (up 197%), Goal (190%), Sportbible (173%), Runners World (140%), Four Four Two (135%) and Sporting Life (108%).
Ipsos iris data is partly derived from a panel of 10,000 people aged 15 and over that is designed to be nationally representative. The participants have meters installed across 25,000 personal devices to passively measure website and app usage.
This is combined with data from participating websites that is tagged so all devices visiting the site can be identified and logged.
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