YouTube is King of Sports Highlights

Sports have been largely successful in their restart from COVID-19 lockdowns in the U.S. Baseball and football have only had a few instances of positive cases associated with their restarts, while the NBA season officially ended with zero positive cases occurring in their socially distanced DisneyWorld bubble. With sports almost feeling like normal, data shows which social media outlet people are going to for their favorite highlights.

According to survey data collected by Ring Digital, YouTube remains the go-to social media platform for sports fans to watch highlights. With 53 percent of fans saying they visit YouTube for their highlights, that beats out other popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat with 45 percent, 30 percent and 16 percent, respectively. Other places fans watch their sports highlights are on TikTok, Twitter and Reddit.

Most social media platforms rose substantially in viewership since the last survey in 2017, with YouTube rising 10 percentage points and Instagram rising 13 percentage points. The only platform to fall was Facebook with a dismal 18 percentage point drop in sports fans viewing highlights on the platform.