Are sports viewership metrics on the up and up — and is anyone indispensable in the sports media?
Sports Media with Richard Deitsch
Audacy
4.5 • 757 Ratings
🗓️ 16 September 2025
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode 546 of the Sports Media Podcast features Jon Lewis, the editor and founder of Sports Media Watch. In this podcast we discuss how sports viewership has been impacted by Nielsen’s use of Big Data and Panel measurement; whether you still make apples to apples comparisons with sport viewership; YouTube revising its viewership for Chiefs-Chargers;
our experiences watching Red Zone; whether ads have impacted the RedZone experience; Scott Hanson as a host; the contracts of ESPN's Malika Andrews and Brian Windhorst; a discussion on whether anyone is indispensable in the sports media and more. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the sports media podcast. I'm your host, Richard Dutch. My producer is Patrick Antonetti. Great to have him back. One guest on this episode, it is John Lewis, the founder and editor of Sports Media Watch. I like to have John, Austin Carp, Chad Finn, etc., the regulists who come on here. As much as I can, it's always good to have a conversation about what is happening with sports media at the moment. Welcome, John. Thanks for having me. |
| 0:39.3 | Of course. All right. Let's talk about sports viewership. We're going to do a lot of this on this podcast because for I think people who've listened to this podcast know this, but I'll sort of just reiterate it if you happen to be listening to this episode as more of a newcomer. Nielsen has changed the way its measurement is. |
| 0:59.4 | They have a new system now called Big Data and Panel, which really has given Nielsen, I think, |
| 1:07.5 | more insight into sports viewership in the U.S. |
| 1:13.5 | And the result of all this is that viewership, since they've gone to this big data and panel, |
| 1:18.7 | has really significantly gone higher. |
| 1:21.6 | Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal estimated when he talked to some media buyers, |
| 1:26.9 | that sports viewership starting in |
| 1:29.3 | September which is when Nielsen made this change may go up five to eight percent |
| 1:34.3 | depending on what you are measuring from a live game to studio shows that's that's massive I |
| 1:42.0 | mean that is particularly really really significant given this is |
| 1:46.0 | sort of how the business sells itself. But more than that, what makes it significant is it kind of |
| 1:50.4 | changes everything in terms of making these apples to apples comparisons. And so that's why I want |
| 1:54.9 | to bring in John Lewis, whose site sports media watch is incredibly invaluable for this |
| 1:59.8 | stuff. And so, so john you are someone who |
| 2:03.3 | has really chronicled impressively over the last 15 20 years um you know major sporting events |
| 2:11.9 | weekly NFL games weekly college football games and you've been able to compare this year over |
| 2:17.4 | year to give people |
| 2:18.7 | a real sense of where the trends are, particularly on linear television. So with Nielsen making |
| 2:25.0 | this change, how will this impact your site and how do you look at it? Because I would think |
| 2:30.7 | it just makes the apples to apple stuff very hard now. |
| 2:36.1 | Absolutely, right? |
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