Television networks and sports leagues rely heavily on Nielsen to tell them how many people are watching football games, tennis matches, and car races at home. Are you counting viewers in bars, hotels, and offices? That can sometimes be a source of controversy.
The measurement giant used NBC’s Super Bowl LX telecast on February 8 to announce that it will begin using a new methodology to equip Nielsen panelists with wearable devices that capture audio from the content they are watching. The company believes this will more accurately reflect what the industry calls “co-viewing,” or watching a video screen with many other people. The hope is that new technology will allow Nielsen ratings to more accurately reflect the total number of people watching programs, especially live events.
Nielsen said the new methodology will be used for the first Super Bowl, which will be broadcast on NBC on Sunday, and will then continue for what it calls “high-profile live sports and entertainment events” in the first half of 2026.
“Nielsen’s mission is to constantly advance measurement and deliver the most accurate data ever. This co-viewing pilot builds on that mission, alongside recent enhancements with Big Data+ panels, outdoor extensions, live streaming measurements, and wearable devices,” Nielsen CEO Kartik Rao said in a statement. “Our clients produce live TV events that are watched by the world, and it’s our job to make sure they’re accurately counting the viewership numbers they’ve meticulously built.”
Live events, primarily created around sports, are the last hope for traditional media in the streaming era. Only sports and live spectacles can attract the massive concurrent viewership that advertisers so desperately need, like the 50th anniversary of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” or the recent Netflix special in which daredevil Alex Honnold scales Taiwan’s tallest building.
Nielsen and TV networks don’t always see the same page when it comes to counting crowds at bars, parties and other non-living room venues. In 2023, the NFL discovered that Nielsen had made an error in how it counted viewers for Super Bowl III on NFL Network and the number of spectators who watched the big game at home. In fact, Nielsen undercounted the event’s total attendance by 2 million people. In 2020, several media conglomerates, including Fox, Walt Disney, and the media company now known as Paramount Skydance, were outraged by Nielsen’s tentative decision to shelve a new way to count outdoor viewing that was expected to uncover larger audiences for sports and news. Nielsen has turned a corner and put new technology into practice.
Some companies are looking to enhance their out-of-home measurements on their own. In 2017, Disney’s ESPN began providing total live viewership, which combined both linear and streaming viewing, as well as Nielsen’s then-initial outdoor audience measurements.
Nielsen’s new outdoor tally will not be considered part of its underlying TV ratings, at least not immediately. Still, the new data will be made available to Nielsen customers a few weeks after the release of traditional viewership numbers, and TV networks will be able to share those findings as they see fit. Nielsen hopes to add the new ratings to the current ratings in time for the 2026-2027 television season, with further enhancements expected in later months.
