Why the NFL (and Everything Else) Keeps Breaking Ratings Records

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matt is joined by Nielsen Global Media executive Brian Fuhrer to discuss why NFL ratings seem to be setting new viewership records all the time, how sports-ratings measurements have changed, why these numbers are so important for sports leagues, and which leagues are growing the fastest (02:35). Matt finishes the show with an opening weekend box office prediction for ‘Five Nights at Freddy's 2’ (26:35). For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Email us your thoughts! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thetown@spotify.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Brian Fuhrer Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:29.8	It is Wednesday, December 3rd. If you've been following sports ratings this fall,
0:35.1	Craig does pretty much nothing else, It's been a series of very
0:38.3	enthusiastic headlines. amid all the doom and gloom in the TV business, every other day,
0:43.1	it's been one record-breaking game after another. The NFL and college football ratings are up
0:47.9	double digits for the big games. The World Series averaged more than 34 million viewers across
0:53.2	the U.S., Canada, and Japan.
0:55.0	That's up 19% year over year.
0:57.6	Then today we got the most eye-popping news of them all.
1:01.1	The Thanksgiving NFL game on CBS between the Chiefs and the Cowboys set a new record for a regular season game, according to Nielsen, with more than 57.2 million viewers.
1:12.6	So what's going on here? A couple things. This is the first TV season for what Nielsen is
1:17.1	calling its Big Data Plus panel. That's measurement where they take their annual survey panels
1:22.3	of more than 100,000 people in the U.S. And then they supplement it with data from 75 million
1:27.4	devices like set-top boxes,
1:29.7	smart TVs, that kind of stuff.
1:31.2	That, they say, provides a more accurate account of who's actually watching this stuff.
1:35.8	They also, as of earlier this year, are measuring 100% of out-of-home viewing rather than
1:41.3	the 65% that they did last year.
	...

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