NEW YORK—As football season kicked off in September, the return of NFL and college games didn’t just attract new viewers, according to Nielsen’s The Gauge. The monthly snapshot of TV viewing also indicated that sports viewing on streaming platforms continues to rise, and audiences are increasingly embracing the cross-platform distribution of NFL games.
This trend was most clearly indicated by the 12% bump in viewership for Amazon’s Prime Video in September, driven largely by “Thursday Night Football.” That NFL-fueled push led Prime Video to ultimately match its platform-best share of TV at 3.6% (set in September 2023 and tied in October 2023), Nielsen reported.
Peacock also benefited from NFL audiences with its exclusive coverage of Green Bay vs. Philadelphia on Sept. 6. The NFL’s debut in São Paulo, Brazil garnered 2.6 billion viewing minutes, making the game the 11th most streamed program in September.
The NFL’s resurgence was also evident on the broadcast side, as pro football games accounted for 14 of September’s top 15 telecasts, with the top three garnering more than 3 billion viewing minutes each on NBC, CBS and Fox, Nielsen’s The Gauge reported.
Broadcast sports viewing was up nearly 9% compared to August, despite already coming off a 44% increase the previous month due to the surge from the Paris Summer Olympics.
Broadcast gained 0.6 share points to account for 22.6% of overall TV in September. In addition to the boost from NFL programming, broadcast drama viewing received an 11% uptick following seasonal debuts of several scripted series. On the broadcast news side, ABC’s simulcast of the Sept. 10 Harris-Trump presidential debate also gave the category a lift. Some 67.1 million viewers across 17 networks tuned in for the debate, and more than 45 million viewers watched on one of the nine broadcast networks that aired it, Nielsen reported.
Streaming maintained its 41% share of TV viewing in September despite a slight viewership decline from August (-2.2%), in line with seasonal trends. Prime Video exhibited the largest monthly growth among all reported streaming platforms in September (+12%), driven by “Thursday Night Football” and original series “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” this month’s third-most-watched streaming title with 4.3 billion viewing minutes.
Disney+ was next in line for growth with a 5.2% bump in viewership to notch a platform-best 2.5% share of TV in September (+0.2 pt.). Thos gains were driven in part by the availability of Hulu content on Disney+ for package subscribers, in addition to a 4.2 billion-minute month for ”Bluey“ (No. 4 overall). Netflix retained its 7.9% share of TV and owned September’s best-performing streaming title, original series “The Perfect Couple,” which garnered 5.5 billion viewing minutes. YouTube also maintained its share of TV from August and continued to lead all streaming platforms with 10.6% of TV usage in September.
Streaming has climbed 11% on a year-over-year basis, with most of the gain disproportionately driven by platforms with over 30% year-over-year growth, including Disney+, Peacock and Tubi.
The Roku Channel was the biggest mover of the year: Viewership of the FAST platform has grown 42% compared with last September.
Cable viewing in September accounted for 26.1% of overall TV, down 0.2 share points from August. The loss was in part due to the large volume of sports and news content provided by the Olympics and the four-day Democratic National Convention last month; the cable sports and news genres were down 17.1% and 4%, respectively.
ABC’s Harris-Trump presidential debate provided some support for the category, with coverage netting nearly 22 million viewers across eight airing cable networks, including over 9 million viewers on Fox News Channel. The top cable telecast in September, however, was the Sept. 16 Atlanta Falcons-Philadelphia Eagles “Monday Night Football” game on ESPN, with more than 13 million viewers.
The September measurement month included five weeks, from Aug. 26 through Sept. 29. Nielsen measurement weeks run Monday through Sunday.
