NFL notes Nielsen shortcomings as “Big Data” era begins

Upon the dawn of yet another new Nielsen era, the measurement company once again finds itself facing questions — this time from the most powerful entity in television.

The NFL believes that Nielsen is “systematically undercounting” millions of viewers, the league’s chief data and analyst Paul Ballew told Joe Flint of The Wall Street Journal in a piece published Tuesday. In particular, Ballew said Nielsen is not adequately gauging the amount of “co-viewing” of NFL games, and noted that the measurement company’s new “Big Data” metric still lacks first-party data from the majority of NFL rightsholders — including ESPN, Fox, NBC and CBS.

Ballew elaborated during a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, saying that while Nielsen has made moves in the direction of more accurately gauging viewership, there is still more work to be done. “We’re going to continue to work with Nielsen, and we’re going to continue to continue to work with other partners to accelerate the measurement innovation even further,” he said. “There’s still opportunities to bring in first party data on the streaming side. There’s still opportunities to deal with some technical deficiencies as it pertains to elements such as co-viewing, especially for big games — what we call tentpole events, like the Super Bowl and Thanksgiving — and there’s still opportunities for us to continue to improve the measurement globally.”

Perhaps most notably, as first reported by WSJ, the NFL is working with Nielsen competitor VideoAmp — and the early performance has been promising, per Ballew. “There’s good in the work we’ve done with them,” Ballew said when asked about the league’s relationship with VideoAmp in Tuesday’s conference call, “and I suspect if you talk to other networks, they’ll feel the same way. They’ve proven to be able to ingest transactional data at scale from the network partners. … They’ve made progress in the last year to 18 months. I think they’d be the first to admit they still have some more work to do, but intriguing is probably the word to best describe what we’ve seen so far.”

Per the WSJ report, ESPN is working with VideoAmp as well and is said to be pleased with the results. CBS used VideoAmp last year during a lengthy impasse with Nielsen that lasted nearly the entire NFL season.

“Clearly, whether it’s VideoAmp or it’s other potential alternative providers out there, the bottom line for the NFL is we’re going to continue to focus on getting the most accurate measurement possible, both for operational and PR purposes,” Ballew said.

Nielsen, as Flint noted, has been critical of VideoAmp’s methodology and accuracy. Separately, Nielsen has sued VideoAmp multiple times alleging patent infringement — most recently in April, mere days after a previous lawsuit it filed against the company was dismissed — just one of one of several potential competitors Nielsen has sued in recent years.

It is far from unusual for networks to express dissatisfaction with Nielsen, though it is relatively rare to hear any such sentiments from the league level. Nielsen and the NFL have had a relatively close relationship in recent years, particularly regarding the development of the Big Data metric, which Ballew said Tuesday is something the league “strongly” supports. He credited Nielsen both for “Big Data” and the expansion of out-of-home viewing that took place earlier this year: “I think we should all feel better that as we go into this season, that we will have a more robust currency that is widely used in the marketplace.”

Ballew gave no indication that Nielsen is on the outs with the league. “It’s a big step forward for 2025 that we’ve taken the step forward with Nielsen, and that Nielsen has been able to move to drive Big Data + Panel as the currency in the marketplace. We look forward to continuing to work with them and our network partners to fully leverage that for messaging purposes externally, as well as operationally.”