Nielsen is expanding its out-of-home panel to expand its coverage to all U.S. TV households. While Nielsen has tracked out-of-home viewing in venues like airports, bars, restaurants, and hotels, it will now provide coverage to other places outside the home.
Capturing this viewing audience is critical for genres of television that people tend to watch communally, particularly sporting events, which continue to grow as one of the most important programming genres in live television. Nielsen data shows that in 2023, fans in the U.S. spent more than 1.7 trillion minutes watching games from the five most-watched sports leagues. In keeping with this theme, Nielsen plans to provide impact data from Q4 2024 by Super Bowl LIX.
“Nielsen is highly focused on innovating in order to better serve our clients and ensure our measurement accounts for the full landscape of television consumption,” said Deirdre Thomas, chief product officer of audience measurement at Nielsen. “We understand how important it is for our clients to be able to have the most complete picture of the audience, especially for special events like the Super Bowl.”
Nielsen believes that, as live sports streaming becomes more prevalent, the importance of measuring live sports and other “appointment” viewing on streaming and linear channels also grows.
“We are appreciative of Nielsen’s efforts to make out-of-home measurement more complete, providing a much clearer picture of the true audience for all television viewing and especially sports viewership,” said Paul Ballew, chief data and analytics officer of the NFL. “For years we have been consistent in our belief that major sports events, like the upcoming Super Bowl LVIII, are often viewed with family and friends in large gatherings and this expanded out-of-home viewership will be crucial to measuring those events.”
Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.
