A massive part of the conversation around sports ratings and all their attendant sports business impacts on rights deals, advertising prices, and beyond is how they’re measured. While there are competitors, Nielsen’s ratings are usually the most-referenced, and they’ve even been used for streaming-exclusive properties such as NFL games on Prime Video, Peacock, and Netflix.
But it’s worth noting that “Nielsen ratings” can actually refer to a variety of data sets with differing methodologies. And a set there that’s quite important for NFL ratings just just got important outside recognition. That would be Media Rating Council accreditation of Nielsen’s Big Data+Panel national TV measurement.
Some background here is necessary. Nielsen’s definition of “big data” for this purpose covers “return-path data (RPD) from cable and satellite set-top boxes, as well as automatic content recognition (ACR) data from internet-connected smart TVs.” Significant portions of that data are available to others, including smart TV and connected-TV device manufacturers, cable, satellite, or virtual multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), and even networks themselves.
But Nielsen’s Big Data+Panel numbers are about combining that information (in their case, from 75 million households and 45 million devices, including work with partners Comcast, DirecTV, Dish, Roku, and Vizio) with their traditional panel approach covering 101,000 people from 42,000 households. And this is becoming an important data set for them, and the accreditation by the MRC that it got here is a big deal.
The 1963-established MRC is a non-profit association, led by representatives from media companies, advertisers, and more. Its accreditation is crucial to determining what measurement marks advertisers, media companies, and ratings services can agree upon. Notably, it approved Nielsen’s sets with first-party data inclusion for Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football last November, ending a long controversy over measurement there.
2022 saw Nielsen covering TNF numbers with just their traditional panel, while Prime Video parent Amazon released significantly higher internal numbers each week. In the wake of that, Nielsen proposed a framework for first-party data incorporation to a variety of clients in 2023, but Amazon was the only one to adopt it then.
That led to huge pushback from other broadcasters such as ESPN, Fox, and CBS, as well as trade groups like the Video Advertising Bureau. And it eventually resulted in two weekly sets of Nielsen data, a panel-only one and a one with that first-party data worked into the Big Data+Panel numbers with those, unsurprisingly, usually coming in higher.
But the MRC approved Nielsen’s first-party data incorporation framework last November, further legitimizing that approach and paving the way for it to potentially expand to other companies. And now, they’ve approved the Big Data+Panel approach overall, the first time they’ve accredited a hybrid panel/big-data product that includes persons level estimates. Here’s more on that from a release, including how the NFL’s happy about this:
The Media Rating Council (MRC) has completed its accreditation process covering Nielsen’s innovative Big Data + Panel National TV measurement, after recently accrediting Nielsen’s integration of first-party live streaming data and re-accrediting Nielsen’s traditional Panel measurement. Nielsen is the first accredited national TV audience measurement provider for Big Data + Panel.
“The accreditation of Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel is a landmark moment for TV ratings, as it will forever change audience measurement,” said Karthik Rao, Nielsen CEO. “No one else pairs a high quality, representative panel with a data set this large, pulling from smart TVs and set top boxes in more than 45 million homes. I believe Big Data + Panel gives the industry the most accurate measurement in the history of TV. We’re grateful to our clients for helping us innovate once again.”
“MRC has completed and evaluated rigorous audits of Nielsen’s National Service and its new components, including first party streaming (thus far consisting of select NFL games) and the integration of big data,” said George Ivie, CEO and Executive Director of the MRC. “We have now approved the integration of big data so this combined methodology can be considered MRC accredited; we appreciate Nielsen’s inclusion of this in the MRC accreditation process.”
…“The NFL continues to support Nielsen’s efforts to modernize measurement so we can all benefit from accurate insights in an increasingly fragmented media marketplace,” said Paul Ballew, Chief Data & Analytic Officer of the NFL. “The accreditation of their Big Data solution is a significant step in the journey and we commend Nielsen for their efforts.”
The objections to the inclusion of first-party data and/or other “big data” in these measurements tailed off even ahead of the official MRC recognition of first-party numbers in November. Most of the other NFL broadcast partners (including some who had previously complained about Amazon’s use of first-party data) signed deals with Nielsen for first-party data inclusion ahead of this NFL season.
Those moves helped those broadcasters tout higher numbers this fall. They also helped alleviate some of the storylines about the year-over-year NFL ratings drop which wound up at two percent for the regular season, not bad considering 2023’s record ratings and the presidential election coverage that competed for viewers this year.
The higher numbers aren’t just about what’s provided by Nielsen, as network approaches there vary. NBC, for example, uses a combination of Nielsen live+same day data and Adobe Analytics digital data for their NFL viewership announcements. But the general takeaway is that even some once-key objectors to the first-party data inclusion idea have gotten on board with that concept (although there’s still debate over some specific implementations) recently. And the MRC accreditation of Nielsen’s Big Data+Panel framework overall means we’ll likely see the concept used much more broadly going forward.
Will that provide a systemic change to viewership numbers? Possibly, but there have been many of those over the years, including changes around new technologies from VCRs to DVRs to streaming. A particularly big recent one was Nielsen’s implementation of out-of-home viewing tracking across the board in 2020 (after previously using it for certain sports events, which got expected notable lifts) and further expansion of that approach last year, both of which have meant that the standard Nielsen panel viewership numbers for sports broadcasts in the out-of-home era are generally larger than they were before that. If the Big Data+Panel numbers become more widely spread and more widely referenced, it’s possible there’s a similar lift ahead, which will be worth keeping in mind in era-to-era comparisons.
The actual sports business implications of that are more debatable. Viewership numbers are fun for many of us to look at and compare, but their actual dollars-and-cents value is only tied to what advertisers are willing to pay to networks for slots, what MVPDs are willing to pay to networks as per-subscriber carriage fees, and what networks are willing to pay to leagues for rights.
All of those values are intertwined, and are subject negotiation (as they will be at networks’ upcoming upfront presentations, which is why this is being announced now). And there are other variables in there as well, including the current shrinking audience for linear live TV broadcasts that aren’t sports. And all those variables fluctuate (as with any currency exchange), and there’s often a notable lag between viewership numbers (which matter the most on a season-long or even multi-year basis) and any impact on rights deals (which often cover even full decades ahead) or advertising rates. And advertisers have often claimed, as with the shifts with out-of-home measurements, that they were already aware of and paying for even the “uncounted” viewers, and they’ll probably make that argument again even with growing industry recognition for Big Data+Panel numbers.
But the recognition from an industry body like the MRC does matter. It means this approach and framework is no longer just something that Nielsen and partners have come up with, but something that has been signed off on by an important external group. That gives these numbers a lot more credence. And that likely means they’ll probably be used more going forward, and it also means that networks have a better case for setting rates based on the Big Data+Panel approach, not just the traditional panel.
