India’s sports viewers spill over into gaming, tech, travel and finance worlds, finds report

New Delhi: India’s sports audience online is not sitting quietly in one corner of the internet anymore. They are not just refreshing scorecards on Cricbuzz or laughing at IPL memes on Instagram. They are, as per the latest Comscore report, among the most multi-category, multi-intent, and commercially active digital users in the country.

The report, which analyses desktop plus mobile audience, churns out findings that are tucked neatly inside a data deck, but one that redefines what “sports audience” means in India’s digital economy.  

Comscore shows that India’s sports audience routinely crosses into several other digital ecosystems, namely technology, gaming, travel, retail, finance, and even health.

Sports is a gateway, not a destination

According to the report, 118 million unique users visited digital sports entities in India in June 2025. Of these, 90% accessed via mobile-only devices, while desktop-only users made up just 9%. The remaining 1% sat at the intersection of the two. 

Comscore’s cross-visiting analysis shows that 70% of India’s sports users also visited gaming platforms, 67% went to technology sites, 58% to travel content, and 31% to health websites within the same period.

This overlap reimagines sports consumption not as a single vertical, but as a multi-intent user journey where match updates, spec-sheet comparisons, flight searches and fitness tips coexist.

In short, the “sports user” in India behaves less like a fan and more like a cross-category consumer, one who is digitally mobile across entertainment, lifestyle, and commerce.

The pattern continues in the commercial layer of the internet. Data reveals that 96.2% of users who visited a sports platform also visited retail sites or apps, while 90.7% accessed financial services in the same month.

This tight coupling of entertainment and transaction behaviour marks a significant opportunity for advertisers. The same individual cheering a cricket match online is, statistically, also shopping, investing, or paying bills within the same digital ecosystem.

That’s why Comscore calls these users “multi-intent digital consumers,” people whose attention travels fast, but whose commercial intent is strong.

At the structural level, the report reiterates what most marketers already know: India’s sports audience is mobile-dominated.

Yet, this mobile dominance now powers a multi-sector media footprint, blurring the lines between sports media, tech content, and commerce discovery.

What this means for publishers is straightforward: being part of the sports conversation no longer guarantees visibility within sports. It means competing for the same user’s time and clicks against gadget reviewers, travel aggregators, and gaming platforms.

Who owns the eyeballs?

On the desktop and mobile web, Cricbuzz surfaced as the leader with 53 million unique visitors in June 2025, followed by Dream11 (26.4 million), ESPN (14.2 million), NDTV Sports (6.6 million), and Cricket Live Line at 6.5 million.

This is purely based on the audience footfall. But things change when social media engagement is factored in. On social media, where engagement rather than unique visitors defines scale, the picture changes dramatically.

On social media, the top five sports publications drove 75.2 million (Star Sports), 73.1 million (CricTracker), 43.2 million (Sportskeeda), 33.2 million (ESPN Cricinfo), and 16.1 million (Cricket Addictor) total actions as of June 2025. 

Actions, in this context, refer to interactions including reactions, comments, shares, reposts, likes and hearts. It shows how social-first performance does not mirror web reach. 

A publication that may rank low in unique visitors can outperform rivals in social engagement, underscoring that reach and resonance now exist in two separate systems. Comscore quantified that divide. In India, 55% of the sports audience is exclusive to social platforms, 42% is exclusive to non-social platforms, and only 3% overlaps.

The ESPN India example illustrates how this split works. The publisher’s 14.2 million desktop and mobile users expand to 36.9 million when its social audience is added and deduplicated—showing the true size of its total digital population.

For media buyers, this distinction is crucial. Web reach doesn’t automatically translate to social buzz, and social interactions don’t always convert to site traffic. Rather, they should focus on “social incremental” measurement, where total reach is recalculated across platforms instead of confined to one.

The social scoreboard

The report dives into where India’s sports fans actually spend their time across digital platforms, and YouTube has emerged as the undisputed home ground for sports fans across every age group, eclipsing all other platforms by a wide margin.

Among users aged 15–24, a staggering 95% engage with sports content on YouTube, compared with 84% on Instagram and 72% on Facebook, while Snapchat (43%) and X (30%) trail far behind. The trend remains consistent among 25–34-year-olds, with 95% using YouTube versus 80% on Instagram and 78% on Facebook. Even among the 35+ audience, YouTube continues to dominate at 94%, leaving Facebook (84%) and Instagram (76%) comfortably behind.

The data signals a clear generational consensus: YouTube has become the universal sports viewing hub, the platform that unites fans across demographics, devices, and interests. While Instagram and Facebook still drive interactive engagement, and Snapchat and X retain niche, youth-oriented traction, YouTube now stands as the primary arena of attention for India’s sports audience. 

More than half of all sports content consumption in India now happens directly on social media. Comscore describes it not as an amplification channel, but as the main arena of attention.

Sports and recreation brands already account for 20% of all social media engagement in India, led by Royal Challengers Bangalore and Chennai Super Kings. The implication is clear: audiences no longer just watch sports; they socially inhabit them.

The report shows how major sporting events can spike digital consumption across platforms.
 On 22 January 2025, the day of the 1st T20 match between India and England, the JioHotstar mobile audience in India nearly doubled to 27.4 million, with time spent streaming rising 129%.

That’s the shape of new-age appointment viewing: matchday equals mobile surge. Globally, the trend mirrors itself. Super Bowl LIX clocked 611 million social actions, while Wimbledon 2025 crossed 226 million social interactions, up 36 million year-on-year, the highest ever for the tournament.

2026 and beyond

The upcoming sports calendar is stacked. The ICC Women’s T20 World Cup, FIFA Men’s World Cup, Winter Olympics, and new F1 urban circuits will each push digital viewership into fresh peaks.

But the base that India already shows—high overlap across categories, a mobile-first structure, and dual-platform fragmentation, signals an ecosystem primed for convergence rather than isolation. 

As Comscore noted,  “Planning a strategy around a single channel fails to reflect the complexity of user behaviour. A deduplicated cross-platform measurement approach is essential to optimise campaign performance.”

Sports is no longer a content niche or a predictable domain of fandom. It is a cross-visiting, cross-buying, cross-behaviour ecosystem, a space where passion, purchase, and platform diversity converge.

In the digital India of 2025, the sports fan is no longer a spectator. They’re the busiest cross-traffic junction on the internet, moving fluidly from match results to mobile reviews, from fantasy leagues to fintech apps, rewriting the playbook of digital attention along the way.