A significant change to Nielsen’s ratings methodology is yielding noticeable — but not massive — gains to some sports programming.
On Sept. 1, Nielsen began rolling out its “big data plus panel” measurement for live programming, just in time for the start of the NFL season and a couple days after the college game got fully underway. In addition to its traditional panel sampling, the company is incorporating data from millions of homes with smart TVs and streaming devices in hopes of giving a more accurate picture of what viewers are watching.
Through the first few weeks of the new era, NFL and college football games are showing sizable gains over the comparable weeks a year ago, when ratings didn’t regularly include the big data component. Fox Sports says its first three weekends of NFL games have averaged 22.42 million viewers, up 14 percent over its panel-only numbers in 2024. Amazon had gains of 19 and 23 percent for its first two Thursday Night Football telecasts. ABC/ESPN, CBS and NBC have also reported growth, as have ESPN and Fox for college football.
Some of that improvement is probably down to attractive matchups — Fox had a Super Bowl rematch in its showcase late afternoon spot on Sept. 15 — and an expansion of Nielsen’s out of home measurement. But where direct comparisons are possible, it does appear that the big data addition is capturing more viewers than the previous panel-only Nielsen ratings.
NBC’s two opening-weekend NFL games averaged about 22.5 million viewers in the big data plus panel measurement (along with 4 million more streaming on Peacock). Panel-only numbers put the average for the two games at 21.5 million viewers, meaning the big data inclusion shows about a million more people watching (a gain of about 5 percent).
The Monday Night Football opener on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 also had about a million more viewers in the big data plus panel measurement vs. just the panel, while CBS had more modest gains of about 300,000 viewers for its first national showcase game. In college football, ESPN and its sibling networks (including ABC) are enjoying their best early-season ratings since the mid-2000s.
Amazon used big data plus panel measurement for Thursday Night Football last season, the only company to do so (before Sept. 1, Nielsen clients could opt into the measurement, but no one else did). Nielsen’s rollout of the new system, though long planned, also came just after the NFL criticized the company for potentially undercounting viewers.
The big data plus panel measurement spread to all Nielsen-measured programming with the official start of the 2025-26 TV season on Sept. 22. Whether it has a similar effect on comedies and dramas as it does on sports will start to become clear in a few weeks.
In conjunction with the spread of its big data plus panel ratings, Nielsen has also begun releasing weekly rankings of the most watched live sports telecasts across platforms. The top 10 for Sept. 22-28 are below.
