From ADOTATUnmeasured: Fox Says More Games Offset the 11% Drop. Nielsen Then Counted Eight Fewer.
Fox Says College Football Viewing Rose. Nielsen Counted an 11% Drop.
By Pesach Lattin,
By Nielsen's count through Week 9, FBS games average 1.6 million viewers, down 11%, across 402 games versus 410 a year ago, per data provided to Front Office Sports. Fox Sports analytics chief Michael Mulvihill says total minutes viewed are up 2%, because "the higher volume negates the lower average." Fine principle. The arithmetic does not cooperate.
Total viewing is average audience times games times length. Fewer games and a lower average should land down roughly 12.7%, by Unmeasured's math. To get to plus 2%, the average broadcast would have to run about 17% longer in one season. Nobody says the games got 17% longer. The likely answer is that Fox is counting a different slice: the big five national networks, which aired 131 games through Week 8. Move games off small cable channels onto ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and ESPN, and that subset grows while the sport shrinks. And in The Athletic's numbers, Fox is the only one of the five that is up. The definition is the whole story.
The 11% is also measured with a friendlier ruler. Nielsen has changed its method three times in under two years, most recently a co-viewing change effective Aug. 31. The Athletic's Stewart Mandel puts the bump at about 3.4%. On last year's ruler, college football would be down closer to 14%. And the decline sits in the middle: top-10 matchups are up 6.4%, while games in the 11 to 25 band fell as much as 22.7%. That middle tier is exactly what the 24-team playoff is supposed to sell.
Unmeasured's frame is the useful one. The average is the buyer's number. The total is the rights holder's number. If your spot is in one game, a season total padded with more windows does not describe what you bought. Buy the game, not the season, ask what the new methodology added to your guarantee, and price the mid-tier on this year's delivery. More supply of a thinner product is not growth. It is an invoice.
Expanded from ADOTAT's Nov. 10 Unmeasured issue, which draws on Nielsen data provided to Front Office Sports for its Nov. 4 and Oct. 1 reports, Michael Mulvihill's Sept. 30 posts on X and his nine-week figure as reported by Front Office Sports, Stewart Mandel's Nov. 3 analysis in The Athletic as reported by Awful Announcing, and Front Office Sports, Associated Press and Sports Business Journal reporting on Nielsen's Aug. 31 changes and the NFL. The 12.7%, 17% and 14% figures are Unmeasured's arithmetic on rounded published numbers and assume a simple per-game average; the national-network explanation is a reading of published counts, not a confirmed account of Fox's method. Mandel's five-network figures through Week 8 are not directly comparable to Nielsen's all-network figures through Week 9. Fox Sports, Nielsen and the College Football Playoff were sent questions on Nov. 9. Unmeasured's recurring character Frank Kowalczyk is fictional and is not quoted here. Troutman Amin sponsors the newsletter and had no role in the issue. ADOTAT has no paid placement in editorial.