It’s a question I’ve often received from readers during my time writing sports media stories:

Why should I care about sports viewership?

It’s a fair query. Let’s start off the top that the number of people viewing your favorite sport does not (nor should) impact your enjoyment of it. Sports viewership is merely one metric of a sport’s popularity, but it’s an important one given the economics of a $30 billion sports media rights business. Where your favorite sports are broadcast, how those sports are presented as far as investment in production resources, and the overall financial health of a sport are all affected by viewership data.

The NFL, as most sports fans know, is far and away the most popular sport in the United States, and TV and digital viewership is the biggest reason the league can make that claim. This year, it feels as if every week the NFL and its media partners are boldly announcing via social media that they have achieved new highs in viewership. A small sampling:

• Per the NFL: Games are averaging 18.58 million viewers (TV + Digital) in 2025, the highest average through Week 5 since 2010 and second highest on record. NFL games are up 8 percent versus last year and up 9 percent over 2023.

• ESPN’s Week 5 matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Jacksonville Jaguars averaged 22.3 million viewers, the most-watched Week 5 game of ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” era (since 2006) and up 40 percent compared with Week 5 last season (Saints vs. Chiefs).

• Fox’s 4:25 p.m. ET window is averaging 26.3 million viewers, up 3 percent over last year’s average through Week 5.

• Sunday’s game in London featuring the Minnesota Vikings’ win over the Cleveland Browns averaged 6.4 million viewers, the third most-watched NFL Network International Game on record and up 35 percent versus NFL Network’s 2024 International Games average.

So what is the main driver of this? Are people more interested in the NFL in 2025? Is it more competitive games and better matchups? Is it Nielsen’s changing its methodology (more on that below)? Is it a combination of all of these? There is no catch-all answer, but let’s examine some of those things.

1. Nielsen’s methodology changes
Media measurement firm Nielsen has long been the standard for measuring U.S. television audience. Those numbers dictate how much media companies can charge for commercials, and such metrics are the financial engine of ad-based media. For years, Nielsen used “panel-based” measurements to track audience. The panels consisted of tens of thousands of households across the United States that were fitted with equipment installed at home to provide an estimated representation of television audiences, including demos on age, income, gender and race. Nielsen’s legacy panel is estimated to have a sample of 42,000 homes, or 101,000 consumers, per Sportico.

Earlier this year, Nielsen switched to what it calls “Big Data + Panel” national TV measurement. In addition to its panel measurement above, Nielsen incorporates data from millions of homes with cable, satellite set-top boxes and internet-connected smart TVs. It has data partnerships with companies such as Comcast, DirecTV, Dish Network, Roku and Vizio, which gives it access to 45 million households and 75 million digital devices in the U.S. alone. Nielsen has also incorporated first-party data directly from certain streaming services to help measure audiences for live streaming events. It uses all of this to provide what it says is more accurate sampling.

Furthermore, Nielsen also added in 2025 an expansion of its “out-of-home” measurement. Out-of-home measurement is what it sounds like — a count of people watching programs away from their homes in places such as bars, restaurants, hotels or airports. This is obviously a massive driver for sports, given how many people watch in such places. The prevailing sentiment in the sports and media businesses is that sports viewership has long been undercounted because OOH did not get comprehensive coverage. In 2024, Nielsen covered 66 percent of the U.S. contiguous television population. Now, Nielsen’s OOH measurement covers 100 percent.

Nielsen does have rivals such as Comscore, iSpot.tv and Video Amp. They focus more on digital measurement technology. Streamers such as Netflix and Prime Video also have their own first-party data, which is proprietary to them.

“We believe Big Data + Panel is delivering the most accurate measurement to date for sports and TV overall,” Nielsen said in a statement. “In partnership with our clients, we’ve worked really hard to build modern measurement that weds the power of Big Data with our trusted persons panel. We’re combining some really powerful data sets: more than 75 million cable set top boxes and connected TVs, with our massive panel of more than 100,000 people, representative of the U.S. population. We’ve also made upgrades to our Out-of-Home panel, which covers all of the U.S. and captures communal viewing in homes, bars, restaurants and hotels.”

2. So have Nielsen’s changes helped NFL viewership?

My reporting suggests the methodology changes from Nielsen have unquestionably aided NFL viewership in 2025. Sports Business Journal predicted in August that Big Data + Panel would add a 5 percent to 8 percent lift compared with panel-only measurement when it came to notable televised sporting events. Sportico reported the ad buyers it spoke with estimating between a 3 percent and 8 percent viewership lift for sports.

Based on talking to people in the business, a rise of about 4 percent in NFL viewership is accurate, strictly using Big Data + Panel changes for 2025 versus panel-only. If you include Big Data + Panel and OOH changes, those changes have lifted NFL viewership in the low double digits so far versus last year’s panel-only measurement. At this point, comparing panel-only this year with panel-only last year shows a small decline after five weeks.

“For the NFL we’ve seen small but expected upside,” Flora Kelly, the senior vice president of ESPN Research, said. “I don’t think we ever had the expectation that the data was going to be significant for the NFL. For ‘Monday Night Football’ specifically, it’s been how competitive the games have been. If you look at Minnesota-Chicago, a relatively close game. Detroit and Baltimore, a relatively close game. Kansas City and Jacksonville blew past our initial forecasting. We are up 28 percent on ‘Monday Night Football’ this year, and I think it’s mostly because of the competitive games.”

“I would say that the changes have been very impactful and yet at the same time a little less impactful than we even thought they were going to be,” Mike Mulvihill, the president of insights and analytics for Fox Sports, said. “I think out-of-home measurement has tracked pretty much on our expectations, both NFL and college, with probably more impact on the collegiate side than on the NFL side. The Big Data piece, for it to be plus-4 percent, we were looking for it to be a little bit more. I think both these things are true simultaneously — it’s very impactful, and it accounts for a lot of the growth that you’re seeing across multiple sports. But I think we also had an expectation that it would be even a little more than this.”

What Kelly reminded me is that the NFL is always is a monster on its own, regardless of methodology changes. To that end, the Eagles-Chiefs Super Bowl rematch Sept. 14 on Fox averaged 33.762 million viewers via Big Data + Panel methodology. The panel-only number, per Sportico, was 32.657 million viewers. So just a small percentage amount of lift.

Where Nielsen’s updated methodology has really had an impact is on college football. Mulvihill and Kelly agreed on that — especially the out-of-home viewing part (which makes total sense).

“We have seen out-of-home measurement really help college football, but we also see organic growth this year,” Kelly said.

3. Give me a chart 

There is nothing like NFL football when it comes to Big Media. Here’s a visual example for you. For the week of Sept. 29 through Oct. 5, NFL programming held all Top 10 spots on Nielsen’s most-viewed shows of broadcast, cable and streaming using all people 2 and older (its entire sampling universe) for Live and Same Day viewing. (No. 1 on the list below was the late window featuring the Commanders-Chargers and Lions-Bengals.)

4. What is the impact of close games on NFL viewership?

Look, they obviously matter. Think of your own viewing habits. Unless you play fantasy, have money on the game or are the type of fan who watches your team in full, you are going to bail on a noncompetitive game.

So how close have games been in this season? Per data from the NFL:

• There have been 24 games in 2025 with a game-winning score in the final two minutes of regulation or in overtime, the most through Week 5 in NFL history.

• There have been 46 games decided by one score (8 points), the third-most ever through Week 5, trailing only 2022 (49) and 2024 (48).

• There have been 44 games decided by 7 points or fewer, the third most ever through Week 5, trailing only 2024 (47) and 2022 (45).

“We look at a long list of on-field factors once a month during the NFL season, and one of the things we noticed about the first four weeks of this year are that games that are within one possession at halftime have higher viewership than they’ve been in several years,” Mulvihill said. “We have seen more games that are one-possession games into the second half than there have been the last couple seasons. I think that matters a lot.”