Dive Brief:
- Nearly 30% of all ad-supported TV viewing came from sports in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to a Nielsen report shared with Marketing Dive.
- Broadcast TV without sports accounted for just 9.8% of total ad-supported viewership. Non-sport cable made up 18% and non-sport streaming 43% of Q4 viewership. The outsized viewership numbers for sports is largely related to the NFL season, college football and the MLB postseason, among others.
- Over 60% of total TV viewing by audiences between the ages of 18 and 49 came from ad-supported sources. Streaming platforms made up the majority, 66.7%, of ad-supported TV watching. A little over 81% of streaming was done on “other ad-supported” platforms like YouTube, Hulu and Amazon Prime. The remaining 19% came from free ad-supported streaming platforms, such as Tubi.
Dive Insight:
Live sports continues to be a bedrock of TV viewership. Super Bowl LX totaled 125.6 million viewers across NBC, Peacock, Telemundo, NBC Sports Digital and NFL+, making it one of the most watched games of all time. The Nielsen research reflects why sports marketing is a source of heavy investment from marketers, with some attracting renewed or stronger interest as live sports continue to offer a captive, live audience amid increased viewer fragmentation,
Coors Banquet, a Molson Coors brand, recently announced it was investing in live sports for the first time in five years, with TV ads planned for the 2026 college football and MLB seasons. Molson Coors' rival, Anheuser-Busch, also recently expanded its partnership with the MLB, extending it through 2032 and adding non-exclusive advertising rights for ready-to-drink cocktail products Cutwater and Nütrl Vodka Seltzer. The extension came as the league passed $2 billion in sponsorships for the first time in 2025.
While sports remains a major category of overall TV viewing, how consumers are watching is changing, per “The New Ad Supported Universe” report, which is part of Nielsen’s 2026 Upfront Planning Series. It includes data from a number of sources, including panel data.
Different age demographics have different preferences when it comes to sports viewership, per Nielsen data. When looking at the NBA regular season, consumers between the ages of 65 and 99 made up 31.6%, the largest share, of broadcast and cable audiences. Viewers in the 35 to 49 range made up 21.1%. When looking at cable and broadcast audiences, as the age of the consumer group went up, the viewership percentage increased.
When looking at streaming audiences for the NBA regular season, the highest percentage, 30.4%, came from consumers aged 35 to 49. Consumers 65 to 99 made up 17.7%, while those between the ages of 50 and 64 made up 25.2%, approximately two percentage points less than their share of the cable and broadcast audience. Those between the ages of 18 and 34 made up 19.4% of streaming audiences, compared to 13.6% of broadcast and cable audiences.
ABC/ESPN proved to be the most popular viewing channel for the NBA season, averaging 351,208 viewers per regular season game. Prime Video came in second, at 215,268 viewers. NBC was the least popular, averaging 210,489 viewers.
