YouTube’s TV Crown Holds—ESPN’s Playoff Punch Shrinks the Gap
The post states that YouTube maintained the largest share of TV viewing for the 11th consecutive month at 12.5%. It adds that The Walt Disney Company narrowed the gap to 0.6 percentage points, driven largely by an 82% ESPN viewership increase attributed to the College Football Playoff.
Key Takeaways
- YouTube led TV viewing share again at 12.5%, extending its streak to 11 months
- Disney closed to within 0.6 percentage points of YouTube’s share
- ESPN viewership jumped 82%, with the College Football Playoff as the primary catalyst
- Live sports can move the entire company-level share needle—fast, but seasonally
- The battle for “TV share” is increasingly a format war: always-on UGC vs. event-driven sports
Why It Matters
This is the scoreboard executives should obsess over: YouTube’s advantage looks structural (daily habit, infinite supply), while Disney’s surge underscores how much leverage premium live sports still carries in attention economics. The meme here is “UGC as the baseline, sports as the spike”—and the strategic risk is mistaking spikes for durable share. If you’re allocating rights budgets, ad inventory, or distribution partnerships, this gap-closing moment is a reminder that sports can temporarily rewrite the ranking, but only platforms with repeatable, year-round engagement can defend the crown.
Read full article at linkedin.com
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