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The initial weeks of the 2025 college football season have been a powerful testament to both the rising popularity of the sport and the immediate impact of Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel audience measurement process.
The season to date has included one milestone after another, including most recently an average audience of 10.4 million for Alabama’s upset of Georgia. The latest ratings, like other weeks, contrast last year’s panel-based viewership metrics with broader ones this year in Big Data + Panel. The new system, introduced at the beginning of September, brings in tens of millions of additional data points from set-top boxes and smart TVs, and it is designed to provide a fuller and more accurate picture of viewer behaviors.
Broader data provided by Nielsen to Front Office Sports shows that even with applying Big Data + Panel methodology to 2024 college football telecasts, the sport has grown by 10.5% from 1.9 million viewers per game in the first five weeks last year to 2.1 million in the comparable period this year. Other viewership metrics surrounding college football in 2025 include:
- A 15% lift in viewership among those ages 18 to 34.
- Six games with an audience of 10 million or more, including the Alabama-Georgia clash. Last year at this time, only one game had reached that level.
For all of 2025 to date, sports content has accounted for 22% of broadcast and cable viewing time among adults ages 25 to 54, despite that content representing 15% of the programming. Last year, which included the Paris Olympics, the sports consumption figure was 19%.
“With everything else going on, people are definitely looking for that escape from live sports, and college football certainly has been a big part of that,” Nielsen SVP Brian Fuhrer tells FOS.
This data lends further support that college football is one of the strongest parts of the entire business of sports, and it is only getting more popular.
“If there’s an argument that anything other than CFB is the hottest sport out there I’d be curious to hear it,” tweeted Fox Sports president of insights and analytics Mike Mulvihill.
Intricate Process
The Big Data + Panel process, with the inclusion of the many additional data points, is the latest in a continuing effort by Nielsen to enlarge its measurement capabilities. Earlier this year, that also included an expansion of out-of-home measurement. In addition to the panels, set-top boxes, and smart TVs part of Big Data + Panel, Nielsen’s process also involves other technologies, such as its detection of inaudible watermarks embedded into television feeds.
The initiative, however, has generated some initial speed bumps, including some pushback from the NFL about how the enhanced metrics are developed, and recent controversy about a non-accredited measurement used for YouTube’s Chiefs-Chargers game from Brazil. Fuhrer says such issues have been expected, and dialogue continues with leagues such as the NFL. The new process has also introduced delays, typically of about 24 hours compared to the prior method, in reporting viewership figures.
“Sports is the most complicated thing we do. It’s also the most high-profile thing we do,” Fuhrer says, referring in part to the fluid time periods inherent to live games. “What’s been really encouraging so far is that we’ve done a good job operationalizing this new process and people are quickly getting accustomed to the new cadence.”
