Other NFL Broadcasters Concerned Nielsen Will Use Amazon’s Internal Numbers for ‘Thursday Night Football’ Ratings
Other NFL Broadcasters Concerned Nielsen Will Use Amazon’s Internal Numbers for ‘Thursday Night Football’ Ratings
The NFL season hasn’t started quite yet in 2023, but Amazon is already putting one in the win column. A report from the Wall Street Journal indicates that Nielsen is planning to use Amazon’s viewership data alongside its own to determine ratings for “Thursday Night Football” streams on Prime Video this year.
This will be the second season of Amazon’s 11-year deal with the NFL to be the exclusive home of national broadcasts of “TNF” games. The 2022 season was a mixed bag for Prime Video ratings-wise; the season started well, but by its end Prime Video averaged 41% fewer viewers for “TNF” than the games received when they were available on Fox or NFL Network nationally.
The move to blend Amazon’s numbers with Nielsen’s has left many advertisers and competing broadcasters highly miffed. Amazon’s own ratings data showed its audience to be nearly 18% greater than Nielsen’s ratings on average last season, and the Video Advertising Bureau — a trade group representing TV network executives — believes mixing the two datasets will give Amazon an unfair leg up on the competition.
“Having DNA-level factors that are inherently biased baked into the system is putting [Amazon] at an advantage,” VAB CEO Sean Cunningham told AdAge. “That’s not fair to the other players, especially since there hasn’t been any constructive engagement from the co-authors of this.” Nielsen has “gone completely opaque as to how these numbers were cooked up in the first place,” he continued.
This is the first time in the company’s history that Nielsen has decided to use the data from a broadcaster to determine its own ratings. Nielsen says that other live-streaming companies that offer sports can apply to have their data used in future ratings, but executives say the firm hasn’t responded to requests on how they can actually do so.
For its part, Nielsen denies that it is slow-playing those conversations with other firms.
“We would not turn away business,” a Nielsen spokesperson told AdAge. “That seems like a very silly accusation.”
Advertising executives aren’t happy with the plan either. Getting a nearly 20% boost in its ratings this year just from measurement methodology will give Amazon more leverage while negotiating higher rates from advertisers to show commercials, and more leverage with the NFL against competing broadcasters the next time its rights are up for sale.
Right or wrong, the move to use Prime Video’s data when generating ratings for “TNF” games has some in the industry believing that Nielsen wants to give streaming a boost over linear programming. Data from Nielsen recently revealed that broadcast and cable had fallen under 50% of total TV viewing for the first time in history in July, and now the perception is that it’s trying to raise the profile of streaming at the expense of linear TV.
Prime Video
Prime Video is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 10,000+ movies, TV shows, and Prime Originals like “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” “Jack Ryan,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “The Boys,” and more. Subscribers can also add third-party services like Max, Showtime, STARZ, and dozens more with Prime Video Channels. Prime Video also offers exclusive live access to NFL Thursday Night Football.