Nielsen's willingness to include Amazon's data in TNF ratings angers other NFL broadcast partners
Last year, Nielsen and Amazon routinely arm wrestled over the development of accurate ratings for Thursday Night Football. This year, their arms are locked together — and the other networks are trying to bust through.
As explained on Friday by Zach Ness of AdAge.com and more recently by John Ourand of Sports Business Journal, Nielsen has agreed to use Amazon’s first-party data in determining the official viewership of TNF games. That will necessarily push the numbers higher — and it will make TNF look as if it is performing better in relation to other NFL TV windows.
The networks and the Video Advertising Bureau have challenged both the agreement and the accelerated timing of an audit by the Media Rating Council, which will consider the Nielsen/Amazon plan on August 30. Just in time for Week 1. The networks believe the MRC will rubber stamp the new approach to TNF.
VAB CEO Sean Cunningham argues that the approach is unfair to the non-Amazon providers, calling Amazon's numbers "inherently biased" and accusing Nielsen of being "completely opaque as to how these numbers were cooked up in the first place” in its failure to fully explain the change to other network customers.
Last year, Amazon's internal data showed viewership 18 percent higher than the Nielsen numbers for the 15 regular-season games broadcast on Prime Video.
Via AdAge.com, the combined data will look "a lot more like" Amazon's numbers as to total households watching. The total viewership numbers will be "more like splitting the difference" between Amazon and Nielsen, with the blended numbers roughly nine percent higher than the Nielsen measurements.
The NFL is supporting the effort, for obvious reasons. While it won't enhance the massive payment the league receives from Amazon for the package, it's critical for the league to retain as much of the audience as possible as it pivots from traditional networks to streaming platforms. Those numbers will drive the next wave of negotiations with all networks and streaming companies.
Cunningham accused Nielsen of putting a "thumb on the scale" for Amazon, in the hopes of cozying up to one of the companies that will be at the heart of the future of TV and sports programming.
Fox executive Mile Mulvihill was far more blunt: “Nielsen is about to sacrifice its most valuable attribute -- impartiality -- to benefit one client, one program and one content supplier," he tweeted, via Ourand. "Reckless, wrongheaded and a slap in the face to the largest Nielsen clients and NFL partners."
Nielsen claims it has made a similar effort to utilize data from streaming platforms from other networks. Network executives, per AdAge.com, responded by saying Nielsen hasn't given them any actual information on how to go about making that happen. Nielsen calls the accusation of a deliberate slow-playing of the effort by other networks to replicate the Amazon approach "silly."
The whole thing is predictable and obvious. Amazon is one of the richest and most powerful companies in broadcasting. It spent all of 2022 haranguing Nielsen to pump up its numbers for TNF. The NFL wants and needs those numbers to be as high as possible.
Even if the other networks don't like it, they likely will have to deal with it. Streaming is the future, and the higher Amazon and the NFL can boost the numbers, the value of the package increases. Likewise, consumers who have resisted the shift to streaming will feel more compelled to embrace the inevitable, if they see how many others have done so.
Even if those numbers aren't, you know, accurate.
