Sports fans are using mobile devices and second screen technology more than ever, according to new data released by Sky Sports.
In particular Sky’s coverage of The Ashes cricket and the start of the football season, including the Transfer Deadline Day, helped grow numbers.
August saw the biggest ever usage of the Sky Sports News app on smartphones with over 3 million unique users on both Android and iPhone; Over 4m monthly unique users used the Sky Sports Football Score Centre across iPhone, Android and Blackberry devices during August; August also proved to be a record month for Sky Sports for iPad, with well over half a million (more than 560,000) unique users checking into the app. The #SkyDeadlineDay hashtag was used on Twitter 146k times whilst @SkySportsNews had 194k mentions.
David Gibbs, Director of Sky Sports Digital, said: “We see a huge appetite from our customers to watch and get closer to the biggest sporting events via their digital devices – whether that’s their iPad at home, or desktop PC at work. ”
There were more than 16m Sky Go viewing sessions for the Sky Sports Ashes channel throughout the series. The first Test was the most popular with over half a million users requesting 4.5 million live views. The climax to the second Test on Sunday July 21 reached the highest single Sky Go audience figure across the series, with more than 250,000 unique users accessing over 1 million live views.
Viewing via Sky Go on PCs spiked each morning (11am – 12noon) as people logged on in the office, while tablet use peaked between 4pm and 6pm daily on Test match days.
It is notable that The Ashes – only available on terrestrial TV in highlights form – produced a similar uplift for the BBC’s iPlayer Radio app. A record 77 million radio requests were made in July, with requests from mobiles the highest they have ever been.
A new record was set on Transfer Deadline Day as sports fans kept up with the latest moves and impending deadlines. During the day, there were nearly 6.9 million unique users across all Sky Sports digital products such as skysports.com, Sky Sports apps and Sky Sports Football Score Centre.
