Nielsen will begin reporting Hispanic-audience ratings for ESPN Deportes, ESPN’s domestic Spanish-language sports network, officials said Thursday.
Nielsen and the network reached an agreement to report program ratings in Nielsen’s U.S. Hispanic cable service, known as the Nielsen Homevideo Index Hispanics service. NHIH data for ESPN Deportes will be available as of April 28.
ESPN Deportes’ ratings will be derived from the Hispanic sub-sample of Nielsen’s National People Meter panel. Some 1,722 Hispanic households are included within Nielsen’s People Meter sample, representing 12% of all households.
With the new agreement, ESPN Deportes joins Discovery en Espanol, Fox Sports en Espanol, Gol TV, mun 2 and Galavision as fully rated Spanish-language cable networks accessible to national clients within the Hispanic sub-sample.
“The addition of ESPN Deportes to Nielsen’s U.S. Hispanic cable service will provide sponsors with additional metric to realize the value of investing on our network” Paul Green, vice president of advertising sales for ESPN Deportes, said in a statement. “The timing is especially good as we enter the 2009 Upfront selling season.”
“We welcome ESPN Deportes to our national sample of Hispanic television networks,” Catherine Herkovic, Nielsen’s managing director of National Television Client Services, said in a prepared statement. “With interest in Spanish-language programming rising steadily, Nielsen is focused on providing more detailed ratings reporting for Spanish-language programmers. We believe this agreement will help to meet that need.”
