Sports TV ratings are about to enjoy another growth spurt, as Nielsen is preparing to beef up its out-of-home reporting system beyond the 44 markets it currently monitors. Set to kick in early next year, the expanded OOH scheme is expected to unearth hitherto undetected impressions captured in public venues such as bars, restaurants and gyms, which in turn should give the networks some leeway to raise their in-game advertising rates.
While it remains to be seen exactly how much of an impact the expansion of the OOH panel will have on overall TV deliveries, any additional lift will be welcome, as the networks look to offset the costs of the escalators that are built into their rights deals.
Since Nielsen officially integrated its OOH measurement with its national TV monitoring service in fall 2020, the networks have enjoyed a considerable spike in their live sports ratings. While the current OOH panel includes all the major media markets, from No. 1 New York City to No. 44 Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News, that 77,000-panelist configuration effectively overlooks 35% of the population. Under the expanded system, OOH deliveries in such sports-crazed markets as New Orleans, Buffalo and Green Bay will be included in Nielsen’s reporting.
Big-time college towns that didn’t make the cut in 2020 also will be added to the OOH panel. Among the areas that should help contribute to a lift in college football and basketball deliveries include Louisville, Birmingham (which includes Tuscaloosa), Memphis and Madison.
A network executive who apprised Sportico of Nielsen’s impending OOH upgrade said the ratings service has made a “commitment to measure the one-third of the country that’s not currently covered by out-of-home,” which should result in “a little ratings upside coming in the relatively near future.” While Nielsen has not gone public with its plans to expand its OOH panel, two broadcast execs confirmed that they’d been told that the new methodology should be in place in time for Super Bowl LIX in February 2025.
Since Nielsen began blending its OOH data with the vanilla home-based TV ratings, sports ratings have predictably surged. The OOH lift is particularly pronounced whenever a major sporting event coincides with a holiday in which tens of millions of Americans gather with their friends and families.
For example, OOH accounted for 41% of CBS’ record Thanksgiving Day turnout, as 17.3 million of the 41.8 million viewers who tuned in to the Cowboys’ 45-10 beatdown of the Commanders watched the game at someone else’s house or in a public space. In the pre-OOH era, CBS’ deliveries would have been cut down to a more pedestrian 24.5 million viewers. But under the newish rules of engagement, the network was credited with serving up the NFL’s second-biggest regular-season game of all time.
For the already massive NFL audience, the OOH lift presents a bit of a coals-to-Newcastle scenario, although all the bonus eyeballs are pouring in at a most opportune time. Given the steep escalators the league’s network partners must pay in each successive year of the new rights deal, every captured impression is a means toward generating additional ad sales revenue.
While the TV marketplace is largely predicated upon basic supply-and-demand principles, ad rates for live sports are on a hockey-stick trajectory. Given that the average broadcast entertainment show is now eking out a hair over 500,000 adults 18-49 per episode—compare that to Sunday Night Football’s average delivery of 5.37 million members of the dollar demo—sports rates are in part calculated within the context of the overall deflation of primetime CPMs.
As much as the improved OOH coverage will help the networks earn credit for even more impressions, the nosebleed Thanksgiving numbers are not expected to see much in the way of future growth. In the markets that are not currently tracked by Nielsen’s Portable People Meters, the ratings service measures OOH by way of what it characterizes as “short term visitor data.”
This is simply another way of saying that Nielsen captures OOH deliveries in all markets by way of its 42,000-household national panel; in other words, the views of most people who watch sports from the comfort of someone else’s home are already being captured, but under the new scheme, impressions delivered in bars, restaurants and other commercial spaces will no longer fall by the wayside.
The expanded service will apply to each and every network that currently participates in the legacy OOH system, a roster that includes nearly all of TV’s top sports outlets. Among the handful of outlets that do not subscribe to Nielsen’s ratings service are CBS Sports Network, ACC Network and SEC Network.
