The National Football League’s debut on Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) YouTube channel drew an average of 17.3M viewers on Friday, according to Nielsen and YouTube compiled data.
The number was based on the average minute audience (AMA) for YouTube’s broadcast of the matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers in Sao Paulo, Brazil. This includes 16.2M AMAs across YouTube and other distribution platforms in the U.S., and 1.1M AMAs outside the U.S.
Before the game was even broadcast, however, rivals were already crying foul over the non-accredited Nielsen data.
“Nielsen’s measurement of the YouTube game will not be made available to other Nielsen clients, a flagrant departure from Nielsen’s history of transparency and a slap in the face to longstanding clients,” Fox Sports president of insights and analytics Mike Mulvihill, tweeted late Friday night.”
“When it comes to streamers, the rules simply don’t apply,” he added.
Complaints at Fox and ESPN (DIS) stem from the methodology used to measure the audience which differs from how Nielsen measures viewership at networks.
Nielen will use a custom process separate from its “Big Data + Panel” methodology to address a lack of “sufficient time for YouTube have proper audience inputs for its accredited workflow relating to first party streaming data,” Front Office Sports reports. Instead, Nielsen used both YouTube’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) internal data and Nielsen’s own analytics to determine the AMA for U.S. viewers.
This differs from Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel methodology which combines a traditional human panel (people meters) with return-path data (RPD) from cable and satellite set-top box and content recognition data (ACR) smart TV data to create a unified set of data.
“Not the same approach as the rest of us, nor [Media Rating Council] accredited. Conclusion, the rating is not a fair comp,” ESPN’s senior vice president of research Flora Kelly tweeted.
By comparison, Amazon’s (AMZN) Thursday Night Football averaged 13.2M viewers while NBC’s (CMCSA) Sunday Night Football averaged 21.4M viewers (including streaming) during the 2024 NFL season.