After some preseason friction among league rights holders, NBC Sports is altering how it measures and reports its NFL viewership, beginning with Wednesday’s season opener between the Patriots and Seahawks.
Industry sources tell Front Office Sports that the Comcast-owned NBC Sports will report its NFL audiences using Nielsen’s established methodology for measuring linear television and streaming.
Previously, NBC Sports had reported its NFL viewership using its own Total Audience Delivery (TAD) figures, which combine Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel measurement with digital data from Adobe Analytics. That approach, however, increasingly ran afoul of both Nielsen and rival networks, who increasingly complained about NBC Sports using blended audience data.
The issue came to a head this summer during the recent FIFA men’s World Cup, when Fox issued viewership releases using strictly Nielsen data, but the NBCUniversal-owned Telemundo relied on that TAD blend of Nielsen and Adobe figures, and also touted its rising appeal during the tournament with non-Spanish speakers.
In the wake of that, Nielsen heightened its scrutiny around competitive claims made by networks using blended audience data. The agency recently told networks that “mixing internal or third-party data with Nielsen metrics to make comparative statements in the press is not permissible.”
With NBC Sports’s shift, that will no longer be an issue. The network is aiming to have its flagship Sunday Night Football franchise achieve an unprecedented 16th straight season as the most-watched primetime program on U.S. television, regardless of genre, and the current approach with Nielsen will enable full marketing around that pursuit.
NBC Sports’s use of the full Nielsen methodology will start on something of a trial basis, running through January, and will be initially applied to its NFL games, as well as its coverage of the MLB wild-card playoffs. A decision on how to approach NBA audience measurement for the upcoming 2026-27 season has not yet been made, and NBC Sports will continue to use TAD figures for its college football games, just without any public statements about other broadcasters.
Even with the change, NBC Sports is still using Adobe Analytics for its digital content measurement, though with this additional Nielsen auditing. The network also still works with FreeWheel to measure its streaming audience internally for monetization purposes.
NBC Sports is also eager to get its 2026 NFL schedule off to a strong start with the Super Bowl LX rematch between the Patriots and Seahawks on Wednesday night. A 65-minute weather delay in last year’s season opener between the Cowboys and Eagles, played on a Thursday, derailed what was initially tracking to be a record audience for an NFL kickoff game.
Changing Times
The new approach by NBC Sports is just one part of a fast-changing realm across television audience measurement.
At the end of August, Nielsen implemented a series of large-scale shifts to its audience measurement, led by an expansion of its co-viewing methodology. Those shifts, representing the third major pivot for Nielsen in less than two years, will be heavily felt during a frenetic sports calendar in the next few months that includes the start of the college and pro football seasons, the MLB and WNBA playoffs, and the start of the new NBA and NHL seasons.
Despite that effort to better capture television consumption that is already occurring, the NFL remains frustrated with Nielsen’s progress. The league said recently that Nielsen’s moves are “overly rushed,” and that it is amplifying efforts to work with rival audience measurement companies.
