The National Football League said it worked with Nielsen on a special study looking at viewing of its games on Thanksgiving Day (November 24) in group settings and found its games reach an average of more than 20 million additional viewers.
According to the study, the games had an average-minute audience of 44.1 million viewers, up 31% from the 33.6 million Nielsen initially reported.
Networks have been challenging Nielsen’s ability to measure audiences. Nielsen lost its accreditation from the Media Rating Council when it was found that Nielsen undercounted viewing during the pandemic.
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"Quantifying the exact number of people watching NFL games on Thanksgiving presents additional challenges due to the fact that so many people gather in different group settings with family and friends," Paul Ballew, chief data and analytics officer of the NFL, said. "As was the case with our study around the Super Bowl, we feel this Nielsen custom survey helps provide a more complete picture of the total viewership for this unique day on the NFL calendar."
Nielsen measures viewing in bars, restaurants and other out-of-home locations and those viewers are included in the national ratings used by networks and advertisers.
The special custom study looked at 5,800 households and was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago using the AmeriSpeak panel. It looked at the size of viewing groups and how much larger those groups are than current measurement systems count.
A similar study found that an estimated 208 million people watch Super Bowl LVI.
“The tradition of family gatherings and NFL football on Thanksgiving Day is endemic to American culture,” Jon Stainer, Nielsen Sports managing director for the Americas, said. “We’re honored to continue working with the NFL on this custom study to help them better understand the size and behaviors of group viewing parties outside our co-viewing measurement.” ■
