The NFL is upset about changes made by Nielsen in its methodology for measuring viewership for the upcoming season, calling them "rushed" and saying they will have a negative impact on sports.
Nielsen announced plans this week to change how it measures audiences on television, beginning on Aug. 31, including alterations to how the company measures whether multiple people are watching an event at the same time.
The NFL is coming off one of its most successful seasons ever on television after Nielsen began using its Big Data + Panel methodology for all events last September. The league averaged 18.7 million viewers per game during the 2025 regular season, an increase of 10% from the 2024 season and the largest for a season since 1989.
The Super Bowl had an audience of 124.9 million viewers on NBC, Peacock, Telemundo, NBC Sports Digital, and NFL+, according to Nielsen's Big Data + Panel rating system, falling just short of the record set the previous season.
Paul Ballew, the league's head of data and analytics, said on a conference call Thursday that the league was still trying to understand how the changes will impact ratings this season.
"We don't have enough impact data to fully assess. We're still trying to make a sense of it," Ballew said. "We're still trying to makes sense of some of the logic behind some of the methodological changes. From our initial impact, it looks like a negative for sports. On the other side, co-viewing or partial co-viewing implementation is a positive. So we're going to have to continue to spend some time pulling this apart and making sense of it."
Ballew said the priority for the league is to find the most accurate number for the audience, as well as having a deeper understanding of the demographics of the viewership.
"Media measurement matters a lot to us," he said. "It's adding into the amount of homework we have to take on going into the season to make sense. We do think it's a misstep on Nielsen's part to go do this the way they're doing it. It continues to accelerate our pressure point to continue to pursue ongoing measurement improvement because it's so critically important to us and everybody else in this space."
Nielsen had been working with partners for a while on the changes and nearly implemented them last October but waited until this season instead.
"Nielsen is delivering the most accurate TV measurement ever, especially when it comes to live sports," Nielsen said in a statement. "We have worked closely with clients, sports leagues and industry regulators to constantly enhance our methodologies. That includes the introduction of Big Data + Panel, the expansion of our Out of Home measurement and a pilot test of co-viewing updates, which are all successful examples of collaboration that lead into the enhancements."