Nielsen’s New Ratings Formula Could Boost Viewership Numbers

Another major change is likely coming this fall to Nielsen’s tabulation of television audiences—rendering a further round of significant viewership impacts to networks and leagues. 

Nielsen said Tuesday that it completed a planned pilot program of an enhanced methodology for measuring co-viewing within households. That initiative, first detailed in early February, showed an average 4.19% viewership lift for a series of marquee events held that month, including Super Bowl LX, the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2026 Winter Olympics, the gold medal game in men’s hockey from those Olympics in Italy, the Daytona 500, and the State of the Union Address. 

With that pilot program now finished, Nielsen is targeting a full inclusion of this increased co-viewing measurement in time for the 2026–27 television season, which starts in September. Currently, this supplemental co-viewing data is not part of official viewership data from the company.

If that new data is made part of official Nielsen measurements, it would represent the third major pivot in its methodologies in 20 months. Previously, Nielsen rolled out its Big Data + Panel process last September, as well as an enlarged counting of out-of-home audiences that began in early 2025. 

During that time, nearly every major pro sports league in the U.S., and the networks that air those games, have seen meaningful increases in their average audiences. 

Similarly, if the 4.19% boost had been part of official Nielsen data for Super Bowl LX, the broadcast’s average viewership would have neared 131 million versus the 125.6 million in the announced average—surpassing the figure for last year’s game and setting a record for the largest audience in U.S. television history.

“Our co-viewing pilot exemplifies our unwavering commitment to providing the most accurate measurement for our clients during these dynamic times of change,” said Nielsen CEO Karthik Rao. “In the past year alone, we’ve made continued enhancements to our ratings to better reflect the power of live TV in reaching massive audiences.”

Football Watching

The process around the co-viewing measurement, however, has been a particular point of contention for the NFL over the past year. Despite reaching a series of audience milestones during the 2025 season, the league says Nielsen’s methods still undercount game audiences.

The economic implications of the perceived divide are massive, as lower ratings can result in downward shifts in advertising rates, and in turn, the value of rights fees, in the billions of dollars. That’s particularly true for the NFL, which continues to rank as the most-watched programming across all of U.S. television.

“I have to give Nielsen credit. We’ve pushed them really hard about this,” NFL chief data and analytics officer Paul Ballew told Front Office Sports in February. “It’s been an issue for us for some time now, and has been frustrating. But they’ve listened and come up with ideas to address the issue.”

With the co-viewing program now done, league sources tell FOS that their sentiments are largely the same—and that while the NFL remains encouraged by Nielsen’s continued diligence in this area, the co-viewing situation is still a work in progress. 

The additional co-viewing data was collected from smartwatch-type wearable devices, capable of passively capturing audio codes from TV broadcasts, which were distributed among Nielsen’s viewership panel.