Nielsen Ratings, Including Sports, Under Fire: ‘Deep Instability’

Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel process to measure television and streaming viewership is once more at the center of controversy, and the National Football League is part of it. 

The Video Advertising Bureau, which represents the television and premium video industry, released a study Tuesday alleging that the audience methodology is showing “deep instability” and is unreliable in several meaningful respects. As part of its research, the VAB said 30 NFL games were among findings that show “severe variability” between traditional, panel-based viewership counts, and the newly enhanced ones that include tens of millions of additional data points from set-top boxes and smart TVs.

“It turns out the begrudging Upfront use of Nielsen’s not-really-ready Big Data trading currency has already gone to worst-case scenario on early returns,” said VAB president and CEO Sean Cunningham.

Nielsen, however, pointed to numerous problems in the VAB study, such as using live-only data instead of live and same-day viewing, as is customary in the television industry, as well as omitting factors such as out-of-home viewership that are critical, particularly in sports.

“This report is seriously flawed and manipulated,” Nielsen said in a statement. “From what we have seen, the VAB incorrectly pulled our data and the bureau does not know how to do a proper ratings analysis. For example, they pulled data for live sports without accounting for the same games airing in different time zones across the U.S. The VAB is wasting the time and money of its members.”

Counting Issues

The back-and-forth debate regarding Big Data + Panel reflects the particularly high stakes around television viewership, the advertising revenue that supports it, and the NFL’s outsized role in that, given its role as the most-watched programming in U.S. television. 

Soon after the start of the 2025 season and the Sept. 1 formal rollout of Big Data + Panel, the NFL said it had some specific issues with the new methodology, but added it was continuing to work with Nielsen to resolve them. 

“We’re happy with the steps we’ve taken forward for 2025, but there’s more work to be done,” NFL chief data and analytics officer Paul Ballew told Front Office Sports in September.

Since then, the NFL has had a banner 2025 season for viewership that included a new record audience for a regular-season game and audience gains that transcend the new methodology. 

The NFL did not comment on the VAB study. While acknowledging strides are being made, the league still believes its audiences are being undercounted to some degree, and that Nielsen to date has made comparatively more progress on a separate expansion of counting out-of-home audiences.

“We still think there’s more opportunity [for further audience growth] once the Big Data element gets captured by Nielsen appropriately,” said NFL EVP of media distribution Hans Schroeder last month.