Business of Sports: College football TV ratings soared, but was a change to the Nielsen measuring system responsible?

Three days after Indiana completed its masterpiece, college football delivered another stunner: The Hoosiers’ victory over Miami in the College Football Playoff championship attracted 30.1 million viewers, according to ESPN.

The figure represented a massive year-over-year increase (36 percent) and the largest audience for the CFP title game since the inaugural event 11 years ago.

But it wasn’t a one-off for the 2025-26 season, which produced multi-year viewership highs on numerous fronts:

— ESPN reported its most-watched regular season since 2011, with a 14 percent increase over 2024-25.

— Fox’s premier broadcast, the “Big Noon” game, experienced an 11 percent year-over-year increase.

— And the sport itself generated the largest regular season audience (across all nationally rated networks) since 2016, per ESPN.

The sequencing seems clear: NIL, the transfer portal and revenue sharing have flattened the competitive landscape, creating unprecedented opportunities for the non-blue bloods like Indiana and Texas Tech, while the expanded playoff has made more games meaningful throughout the fall. That combination brought more fans to the sport and fueled the surge in TV viewership.

Or is the ratings boom one giant misdirection play?

With so much attention on the portal, NIL and playoff expansion, another crucial development unfolded in the shadows: Nielsen Media Research, long the gold standard for TV ratings, altered the way it collects data. And not by a little.

So great is the change, in fact, that there’s reason to wonder if college football has become more popular or if the ratings rise simply reflects longtime fans who weren’t captured by Nielsen’s previous system.

The 2025 season was the first in which the company’s Out-of-Home audience measurement, which includes sports bars, captured 100 percent of the country.

“It’s not just organic growth,” said Patrick Crakes, the head of Crakes Media and a former Fox Sports vice president for programming, research and content strategy. “The Out-of-Home (system) is a strong factor.

“The measurement changes have benefitted college football the most because it’s what people leave their homes to watch.”

Nielsen actually made two changes to its measuring system. One is the so-called Big Data + Panel methodology, which includes smart TVs and streaming views. But the impact of Big Data on college football ratings is “nominal,” according to Flora Kelly, ESPN’s senior vice president for research.

“ESPN had our highest (college football) ratings since 2011,” she added, “and without Big Data, we would have had our highest ratings since 2011.

“The part that’s important is Out-of-Home.”

Nielsen has been including its Out-of-Home audience data in TV ratings for years — but only with 60 percent of the TV markets represented, Kelly said. “And it was mostly the larger ones.”

The unmeasured markets? College towns.

But this fall, Nielsen expanded Out-of-Home measuring to include 100 percent of the country.

That helps explain why Fox averaged 16.1 million viewers for the World Series, the highest total since 2017.

And why the NFL’s average of 18.7 million per game for the regular season was the largest in 36 years, according to Sportico.

But perhaps no sport benefited from the Out-of-Home change more than college football because “it over-indexes in the smaller markets” that are now part of the ratings data, Crakes noted.

Fox averaged 3.4 million viewers across all windows, not just “Big Noon”. That’s a 12 percent increase, according to the Sports Business Journal. And the network’s Friday night viewership (hello, sports bars!) was the best on record with an average of 2.3 million viewers.

Meanwhile, ABC generated its best season since 2006, although the stacking of SEC games in double- and triple-header fashion contributed to the average viewership of 6.9 million.

“Nielsen was undervaluing college football,” Kelly said. “That has been right-sized.”

So how much of the ratings uptick this season can be attributed to the Nielsen change?

Eight million more viewers were reported for the Indiana-Miami championship game than for the 2025 edition, which matched two traditional powers, Ohio State against Notre Dame.

How many were new? How many weren’t captured under the previous Out-of-Home system?

Kelly didn’t have an answer.

“You can’t pull Out-Of-Home” data specifically, she said, “but even without the enhancements, you would still see growth.”

How much? The answer will come, but patience is required.

“We’ll know next year,” Crakes said. “We’ll have an apples-to-apples situation (with the Out-of-Home data) to see how much of the growth is organic.”

*** Previously published Hotline articles on sports media:

— The CFP rankings shows, ESPN’s insurgents and the need for credibility
— Fox, CBS should flip windows to help the Big Ten’s West Coast teams
— Brett Yormark’s “GameDay” pursuit and the Big 12’s media strategy
— Pac-12 completes media rights package: USA Network joins CBS and The CW
— Friday night football is a ratings success; are doubleheaders next?
— How the Week 5 games highlight CBS’ big whiff with the SEC
— Explaining the 11 p.m. (ET) kickoff time for USC-Michigan State
— Dave Portnoy and Ohio State is a dangerous game for Fox
— The Big 12’s social media game is clever, proactive and undaunted
— Low ratings, NFL conflicts make it clear: CFP calendar needs to change
— Thanksgiving Eve is an open broadcast window the Big 12, Pac-12 should exploit

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