Readers flock to AS during a fantastic summer of sport

The summer of 2021 was a hectic one for sports publications with Euro 2020, Copa América, the Olympic Games in Tokyo, NFL Finals, Tour de France, Wimbledon, F1, the departure of Messi and Ramos from Barcelona and Real Madrid… and a heart-stopping end to the soccer transfer window, with Mbappé’s move to the Bernabéu frustrated, Camivinga’s transfer to Madrid and the return of Griezmann to Atlético Madrid. This newspaper was there for all these events and more, registering a number of audience milestones and confirming the newspaper’s leadership in the Spanish speaking global sports market.

AS sees 23.6 million readers in USA

These solid audience figures have been confirmed by the report for July from Comscore, the official measurement company for the advertising market. As.com holds first place in the ranking for Spain, for the second time, as reported by Spanish newspaper 20 Minutes, with a total of 19.2 million unique users, a million more than Marca (18.2). PRISA Media’s sports outlet was also ahead of Marca in the USA, where AS registered 23.6 million unique users and is fifth in the ranking for all languages for sports media websites (excluding league sites and video aggregators). Marca was 12th with 11.9 million unique users. Furthermore, AS continues to hold first place in Colombia and Peru (PC only data), is second in Mexico and Chile and third in Argentina.

July was a fine month for audiences across all edition of AS, setting a number of records, according to Adobe Analytics. Among these was the notable figure of 133 million unique users in the month globally, and records set in the USA, Mexico, AS English and Meristation, the video games website of AS. The cycling section also saw its best ever audience figure for the coverage of the Tour de France. These records came hot on the heels of June’s record of the highest ever daily number of readers: 14.5 million.

Readers have continued to rely on AS in August for incisive, up-to-date sports news, registering 122.4 million unique users and highest ever number of page views, according to Adobe Analytics. This makes it the 13th month with over 100 million of unique users. The Olympic Games and close of the soccer transfer market saw AS set new records in video audience, on the App and sections including Football, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Other Sports.

Success of Stories and podcasts

This summer AS launched Stories, a new narrative format imported from social media, to chronicle events in a direct, visual manner. The Stories covered a number of events, including Euro 2020, the Olympic Games and the start of LaLiga in Spain. The digital guide to LaLiga Santander and Smartbank 2021-22 was also created in this format with positive results.

Moreover, AS launched in June ‘Los últimos de la lista’ (Last on the list) the first podcast from the AS Audio project, co-produced with Podium Podcast and presented by Javier Aznar and Enrique Ballester, which quickly found its place at the top of the listening rankings on Spotify and Apple.

AS started its international expansion in 2013 and has nine digital editions (Spain, the Americas, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, USA Latino and English) with a notable focus on Latin America. As of today 70% of the sites audiences are located outside Spain.