Whenever anyone gets a glimpse at my phone the first reaction tends to be “Holy crap, how many freaking apps do you have??!”. Truth be told, for as much as I have learned how not to hoard physical possessions any more I still tend to hoard digital ones I’ve amassed over time. I could arguably benefit from a good housecleaning and optimization, but ironically that might involve my downloading another app. and Ill further confess I’m more than a little lazy when it comes to such priorities.
But the upside is that I get more alerts from more different sources than most people. Plenty are redundant. But occasionally a story that I would expect should have been covered by more expected sources and reporters ostensibly assigned to such beats eminantes from a completely unexpected url. Such was the case earlier this morning when of all people FRONT OFFICE SPORTS’ Eric Fisher–not one of his counterparts at a publication like DEADLINE or ADVERTISING AGE– dropped this into my inbox:
For the third time in less than two years, Nielsen is about to roll out a significant change to its media measurement, something that will once again have huge impacts across sports media. Following its introduction of expanded out-of-home tabulation early last year and the September 2025 rollout of Big Data + Panel process, Nielsen is readying a widespread adoption of a new co-viewing measurement methodology.
The new system is aimed at providing greater clarity on group viewing patterns and follows a pilot program conducted early this year. On the heels of that effort, Nielsen is now preparing the expanded co-viewing to be part of official audience measurements, known within the media business as “currency,” as soon as September and the arrival of the 2026–27 television season. “This is obviously complex stuff, but our goal is still very simple: we want to be as accurate as possible, and this is the next iteration of Big Data,” Nielsen head of global sports Seth Ladetsky tells Front Office Sports.
Yeah, it is complex, especially when one who isn’t well-versed in research specifics tries to grasp the kind of details that Fisher does at least try to man-splain:
What Exactly Is Co-Viewing?
This is the measurement of group viewing within a single household at the same time. It’s already been part of Nielsen’s methodology, but is now being expanded to include members of its viewership panel wearing proprietary smartwatch-type devices. Those devices, not previously part of Nielsen’s co-viewing modeling, passively capture audio codes from TV broadcasts and are designed to provide greater accuracy to this part of the audience measurement.
This reflects a significant and sometimes rare step on the part of Nielsen to proactively find a way to address what has been a topic of debate among researchers and the stakeholders they answer into for decades. The persistent nagging belief that there had to be more people out there watching something than those dopes in Dundein and Oldsmar were telling us. I’ve often referenced the issue of crediting viewing to non-connected screens that failed Nielsen competitors like Symphony and TV Time embraced; there have also been studies with out-of-home viewing that borrowed from technology of “portable people meters” developed by the radio-centric Arbitron company that used to compete head-on with Nielsen before it was swallowed up by the latter in an M & A opportunity that mirrored those that their clients were all too frequently taking advantage of.
The concept of addressing “viewers per set” is actually one that dates back to the earliest days of television measurement, when many households typically had only one set that was the focus of a living room. Those seasoned enough to remember when 25 inch consoles with rich mahogany cabinets and sometimes even a built-in bar dominated decor will recall when old-school Nielsen books would include the “vps” or “vpvh” column as a way for family-appeal shows to justify premium rates. But those measurements were based upon diaries and the need for respondents to consistently log in their presence to on-screen prompts. That required the level of attention to detail that I would need to muster these days to download an app. Sorry to tell you, I’m by far the only lazy boomer out there. So a lot got left on the table, especially as more and more TVs and eventually devices got dropped into households.
But in an era where more and more families create mancaves and take advantage of entertainment centers that rival theatres–and where the price of going out is increasingly a burden for those who have to deal with kids–co-viewing is all the more a reality than ever. And that’s particularly true when it comes to sports, when watch parties for those who can’t afford tickets mto live events has become an even bigger reality.
As Fisher further reports, as a result of this back to the future focusing for a change there are plenty of people actually saying positive things about Nielsen:
“We love to see the signs that the World Cup is bringing fans together,” Fox Sports president of insights and analytics Mike Mulvihill said in a social-media post…Even before the adoption of the expanded co-viewing, Fox has been paying particularly close attention to this metric during the ongoing World Cup. Initial group-stage matches on the network averaged 2.2 viewers per household. That’s close to the 2.4-person co-viewing average for the Super Bowl that has been considered a “gold standard” for the industry, even as the NFL has questioned that latter figure…That group viewing during the soccer tournament will likely serve as something of a baseline to compare against once the new Nielsen methodology is in place, particularly during big upcoming sports events.
“Sports is the most complex thing we do, and the NFL is the most complex within that,” Nielsen SVP Brian Fuhrer tells FOS. “It obviously has the biggest audiences, the highest profile, and a lot goes on in the background to get this right. But the core principles of what we do remain the same throughout.”…These are things that just make so much sense,” Fuhrer said. “It takes a lot of work, and there are a lot of things still happening [around this], but we really want to bring this to market because it will help our clients make more sense of what’s happening out there.”…Nielsen…has been insistent that each process change, including this latest one with co-viewing, is not about delivering audience increases. Rather, the goal is to use technology to better reflect the content consumption that’s already happening.
That public righteousness aside, the numbers speak for themselves:
The pilot program from earlier this year yielded an average 4.19% viewership lift for a series of marquee events in February, including Super Bowl LX, the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2026 Winter Olympics, the gold medal game in men’s hockey from those Olympics in Italy, the Daytona 500, and the State of the Union Address. Had that expanded co-viewing measurement previously been part of the official audience measurements—it won’t be until at least the new television season—Super Bowl LX would have set a new record for the largest audience in U.S. television history…(G)iven the scale involved in top live sports, even a 4% hike in viewership can result in billion-dollar swings in rights fee values over time.
Nielsen For The Win. Go figure.
Until next time…