Based on the September comScore numbers, the winner is … drumroll please … for the second month in a row, Yahoo! Sports. ESPN finished a close second, just 414,000 unique visitors off the pace, but the big story was third place. For the first time since we started tracking these numbers this summer, the NFL Internet Group catapulted into third, narrowly overtaking Fox Sports. Two mild surprises: NBA.com didn’t crack the Top 10, and bouyed by the start of college football, College Spots TV surged ahead of Sportsline and AOL. And if you’re new to this game, roll-ups are websites that are bought by the big boys (every blogger’s dream) to pump up their bottom line, get hip and cool, and secure even more advertising. As usual, many, many thanks to our comScore tipster. After the jump, all the relevant numbers.
Yahoo! Sports 24,582,000 unique visitors.
Biggest roll-up: Rivals, which reeled in 2.8 million uniques.
ESPN 24,168,000 unique visitors
Biggest roll-up: The Active Network, which had 3.2 million uniques. If you’re wondering just how close (or how far) apart these two were, if ESPN had counted our unique visitors (based on Google Analytics - site meter does not measure uniques as far as we can tell), the deficit would have been a mere 113,000 uniques.
NFL Internet Group 18,081,000 unique visitors
Biggest roll-up: NFL.com grabbed 11.4 million uniques, and the most popular team sites are the Cowboys (1.6), the Steelers (911,000), Bears (909,000) Packers (868,000) and Eagles (760,000). The least popular (meaning more people visited our site in September) are the Cardinals (251,000) and Jaguars (158,000).
Fox Sports on MSN 17,463,000 unique visitors
Biggest roll-up: Scout.com, which tallied 2.2 million uniques. Not sure if this is an error, but comScore reported that Ben Maller tallied just 3,000 uniques, which seems awfully low, since he had 38,000 in July. Perhaps he stopped updating his blog.
MLB.com 12,312,000 unique visitors
No roll-ups listed. In case you’re wondering, yes, we anticipate this number to actually decrease in October despite the World Series. Not a knock on the teams, but if Chicago, Philly and New York had advanced, you’d have three much larger markets with many more fans.
College Sports TV 8,788,000 unique visitors
Biggest roll-up: Fansonly.com drew 685,000 uniques, but it should be noted that GOUSFBULLS.com, likely boosted by South Florida’s win over WVU, registered a whopping 155,000 uniques.
AOL Sports 7,147,000 unique visitors
Maybe we just missed it in the past, but AOL now has a roll-up: LAT34.com, some kind of action sports website. They had 254,000 uniques. Perhaps AOL is hitching its wagon to niche sports?
CBS Sportsline 6,775,000 unique visitors
Biggest roll-up: NCAA Sports.com drew 410,000 uniques.
Sports Illustrated 5,963,000 unique visitors
Biggest roll-up: Fan Nation.com, which competes with Scout, Fansonly and Rivals for that somewhat coveted college market, pulled in 1,117,000 uniques.
WWE 4,581,000 unique visitors
People like their WWE gear – 943,000 visitors stopped by the WWE shop.