There’s no hiding from analytics in the sports world. What happens on the field is often dictated by analytics. The decisions made by coaches or managers are usually the final result of conversations with members of the front office about data. And now data’s impact on the sports world off the field is growing as well.
Record-setting viewership numbers. Subscription spikes. People are using analytics to help make sense of what in the past was hard to quantify. Let’s take a look at the different ways data is being used to measure the impact of sports on the way they are watched, and how that can impact many other industries as well.
Record numbers
On Thanksgiving Day, the National Football League’s three games averaged 44.7 million viewers, including the most-watched regular season game of all-time. Chiefs-Cowboys averaged 57.2 million viewers, more than 15 million more than the previous record holder. That game was on CBS, with NBC and Fox Sports airing the other two games.
Around the same time, Antenna released data showing that Apple TV’s largest subscriber spikes between April and September came from baseball games. 722,000 people signed up for the Dodgers-Yankees game in May, 698,000 for Yankees-Phillies in July, and 631,000 for Mets-Phillies in June. For comparison, the new season of ‘The Morning Show’ generated 524,000 sign-ups. Six of the 10 largest increases in that time period came from baseball games.
New measures
The ubiquity of data means anyone can use it to boost their visibility. Many organizations visualize the numbers – whether they gather the data themselves or take it from someone else – to drive traffic to their own sites. With something like streaming data, which the streaming services have historically kept somewhat close to the vest, other companies have taken the initiative to track such metrics as daily sign-ups or the aforementioned subscription spikes.
As far as ratings, those numbers are being measured more accurately as well. Nielsen, known for its years of measuring television ratings from set-top boxes, has unveiled its Big Data + Panel system. The company still collects panel information from 101,000 people across about 42,000 households, but it also collects data from 75 million devices. “Nielsen’s data scientists validate hundreds of millions of data points and billions of impressions across screens against information from the real people who make up our panel, correcting for biases and other gaps in the data,” the company says. “This yields a person-level measurement that is representative of the larger population at scale.” It’s no surprise that there are record viewership numbers – more viewers are being accurately recorded than ever before.
Impact of analytics
The impact that these data points are having on sports is an example of how the right data can change the way an organization does business. In this case, figuring out actual viewership numbers where it was not previously available was the driving force. That’s the biggest first step for any organization in any industry: zeroing in on what you want to know. From there it is a matter of figuring out what data can help you find out the answers to your questions.
Most organizations have more data than they know what to do with. By starting with what you want the end result can be, it makes it less overwhelming for all involved. Once you have the direction you want to go, you’re just looking at the necessary data and ignoring what doesn’t help. It is important to include all stakeholders in that process, too. Everyone needs to be on the same page in order to get the most out of the data, and different people might use the information differently, which could offer insights into the way an organization approaches its analytics work.
It’s one thing to collect the data, it’s another to make sure the data makes sense. Just like with Nielsen’s data scientists, in order to get value from the numbers, you need to provide the appropriate context. The right analytics solution can bring together all of the appropriate data to help an organization make the important decisions that will set them apart from the competition.
It doesn’t take an analytics expert to realize that with the success sports brings to streaming services, more streaming services are going to want more games. The NFL is already toying with the idea of adding a second game on Black Friday, where it has played one game for the past three years, airing on Amazon Prime Video. Data offers new ways to measure what was previously unmeasurable…and to provide solid reasoning for ideas that seem to make sense but might need more evidence before they are put into action.
- Top 5 Blog Posts of 2025 - December 30, 2025
- Analytics Helps Measure the Previously Unmeasurable in Sports - December 18, 2025
- AI Leads the Way for Utilities in 2026 - December 11, 2025
