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Sports Media · The United States

Top sports media in the United States

The outlets that cover sport in the United States — the sports press, the broadcasters, the agencies and the specialist titles.
✓ Last reviewed: September 2026

These are the outlets that cover sport in the United States — the sports press, the broadcasters that hold or have held rights, the national news agency where it carries sport, and the specialist titles of national standing. Single-sport titles without national standing are not listed here; they appear on the media list for their own sport.

How this list is ordered. By role and national standing — the sports press first, then the broadcasters that hold or have held rights, then the national news agency and the specialist titles. That order is set once and stays put, so a page that has been cited does not rearrange itself later. The Tranco figure against each outlet is shown for reference and does not set the order. Tranco is a research ranking of web domains that averages the Chrome User Experience Report, Cloudflare Radar, Majestic, Cisco Umbrella and Farsight over the preceding 30 days, on the list of September 2026. It ranks a whole domain, not a sports desk. A general daily's rank counts every reader it has, most of whom did not come for sport, so a national newspaper will sit above a dedicated sports title that has more sports readers than it does. Some outlets carry no Tranco figure at all. Tranco ranks registrable domains, so a sports desk published on a subdomain cannot appear in it whatever its readership, and a smaller national outlet may sit outside the top million. Those are marked below.

1. ESPNGeneral sports coverage · Television · Tranco 404 — The worldwide leader in sports — America's dominant sports broadcaster and the world's most-visited sports website, since 1979. 2. The AthleticGeneral sports coverage · News site · Tranco 13,689 — The subscription sports newsroom of The New York Times — hundreds of dedicated beat journalists across U.S. and global sport. 3. CBS SportsBroadcaster · Television · Tranco 3,175 — The sports division of CBS — broadcaster of March Madness, the Masters and the NFL since broadcast television's first decades. 4. Sports IllustratedGeneral sports coverage · Magazine · Tranco 3,536 — America's storied sports magazine since 1954 — its cover a cultural institution, its Sportsperson of the Year among sport's oldest honors. 5. Associated PressNews agency · News agency · Tranco 803 — The AP — the American news cooperative since 1846, whose sports wire and polls reach thousands of outlets worldwide. 6. ESPN DeportesGeneral sports coverage · Television · not in the Tranco top million — ESPN's Spanish-language arm — sports television and digital coverage for the U.S. Hispanic audience and Latin America.