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.”
