From ADOTATUnmeasured: Fox Says More Games Offset the 11% Drop. Nielsen Then Counted Eight Fewer.
Fox Sports Says Viewing Is Up. Nielsen Has College Football Down 11%.
By Pesach Lattin,
By Nielsen's count, college football games are averaging 1.6 million viewers through Week 9, down 11%, across 402 games against 410 last year. Michael Mulvihill, who runs analytics at Fox Sports, says total minutes viewed are up 2%, because more games are on national TV and the volume, in his words, negates the lower average. Negate means cancel. It does not mean add.
Do the multiplication. An average down 11% across eight fewer games should put total viewing down roughly 12.7%, by Unmeasured's arithmetic. For both numbers to be true on the same games, broadcasts would have had to get about 17% longer in one season. Nobody has said that. The likely answer is that Fox is counting a different slice: the big five networks aired 131 games through Week 8, up from 106 windows in 2021. And per The Athletic's Stewart Mandel, Fox is the only one of the five that is up. The number comes from the one network it flatters.
The decline also survived a more generous ruler. Nielsen has changed its method three times in under two years, most recently a co-viewing change on Aug. 31. Mandel puts the latest lift at about 3.4%. On last year's ruler, the sport would be down closer to 14%. The top is fine: top-10 matchups are up 6.4%. The middle is not. Games between teams ranked 11 to 15 and those below are down 22.7%. That middle tier is exactly what the 24-team playoff is supposed to sell.
The NFL, meanwhile, called Nielsen's changes "overly rushed" in August. Its viewership is now up 3%, within what the method change alone could explain, and the league credited close games. For a buyer the rule is simple. The average is your number. The total is the rights holder's number. Buy the game, not the season, ask what the new ruler added to your delivery, and do not let total viewing set your CPM.
Expanded from ADOTAT's Nov. 10 Unmeasured issue, which draws on Nielsen data provided to Front Office Sports, Michael Mulvihill's posts on X and his figure as reported by Front Office Sports, Stewart Mandel's Nov. 3 analysis in The Athletic as reported by Awful Announcing, Front Office Sports' and the Associated Press's reporting on Nielsen's Aug. 31 changes and the NFL's response, and Sports Business Journal's NFL figures as reported by Awful Announcing. 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 figures cover five networks through Week 8 and are not directly comparable to Nielsen's all-network figures. Fox Sports, Nielsen and the College Football Playoff were sent questions on Nov. 9. The original's commentator, Frank Kowalczyk, is fictional and is not quoted here. Troutman Amin sponsors Unmeasured and had no role in the issue. No paid placement in editorial.