NEW YORK — The NFL’s viewership surge so far this season is transcending any lift deriving from Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel measurement process, league officials said.
As the league enjoys a historically strong start to the 2025 season in its television audiences, the NFL said the expanding Nielsen methodology that brings in data from tens of millions of set-top boxes and smart TVs does not tell its entire story.
“It’s been an incredibly strong start. We’re up across all partners and across all demos,” said NFL EVP Hans Schroeder. “Those viewership increases, which have been great, have been in a changing Nielsen environment, and one where some of the projected forecasts [elsewhere in television] probably haven’t materialized as much, so we think we’re doing phenomenally well, with more growth to come.”
Through Week 6 of the season, the league was averaging 18 million viewers per game, up 7% from the comparable point last year, and the highest since a record-setting season in 2015. The schedule’s early portion has also included several milestone games, most notably the Sept. 14 clash between the Eagles and Chiefs that was a Super Bowl LIX rematch and averaged 33.8 million viewers, representing the most-watched Week 2 game ever, and the best-ever Sunday telecast in the regular season for Fox.
“If you look at some of the isolated data through Big Data, one of our partners was up, but their Big Data lift was down,” Schroeder said. “That, in and of itself, was pretty remarkable.”
College football has also seen a mix of organic growth and lifts from Big Data + Panel, but even when applying the new methodology to last year’s data, that sport has seen a double-digit-percentage increase in viewership.
After the NFL openly criticized parts of Nielsen’s methods as the season began, Schroeder took a more conciliatory tone toward the agency Wednesday.
“Nielsen’s on to something. We’re focused on one thing: what is the best and most accurate measurement of an NFL audience,” Schroeder said. “All these steps help us get there, but we’re still in process. There’s more work to be done.”
