YEAR IN SPORTS MEDIA REPORT 2015 STEPHEN MASTER, SVP SPORTS, NIELSEN Welcome to Nielsen’s State of the Media: 2015 Year in Sports Media Report, a compilation of media highlights, advertiser trends and consumer insights across leading sports properties. The growing inuence of Netix, Amazon Prime, on demand/time shifting, streaming, and social media are all having a dramatic impact on the way people are consuming content and changing the landscape of linear TV. However, despite all of the new devices and media fragmentation, sports programming remains an outlier from other genres of content. As live TV viewership and engagement numbers across all screens continues to get stronger, sports content continues to thrive. While it’s great to see that TV is as strong as ever for engaging sports fans, we’ve made it a priority in 2015 to deliver a complete view of our clients’ audience – their Total Audience – on all platforms, including mobile, on-demand or through over-the-top devices. Most importantly, we’re working to make sure our media and sports clients have this complete view with metrics that are apple-to-apples, so when fans livestream games and events online, they can stack their digital and TV audience side by-side in a truly comparable way. From the introduction of Total Audience Ratings to Talent Analytics, Nielsen’s “FANALYTICS” platform— what we refer to as the collective intelligence and insights around sports consumers—continues to evolve, helping our clients gain a deeper understanding of the sports fan. We’ve made it a priority in 2015 to deliver a complete view of our clients’ audience – their Total Audience – on all platforms As you’ll see inside these pages, sports fans’ passion for their favorite athletes and teams continues to strengthen and below are some of the highlights that transpired on and o the eld in 2015: • Despite the “Deategate” controversy surrounding the AFC Championship Game, Tom Brady and the Pats were able to hang on for their fourth Super Bowl win. The thrilling nish and the debate regarding the air pressure in the footballs prior to kicko resulted in yet another TV record for the Super Bowl, as 114.4 million viewers tuned in. • LeBron’s return to his hometown Cavaliers was the biggest story throughout the 2014-15 NBA season and it didn’t take long for him to turn Cleveland around. He brought the Cavaliers back to the NBA Finals after their four-year playo drought, which began with his “decision” to take his talents to South Beach. However, the running and gunning style of play of the Golden State Warriors, led by Steph Curry, prolonged Cleveland’s championship drought for at least one more year. The LeBron vs. Steph matchup was thrilling for fans, as the back-and-forth series, which the Warriors ended up winning in six games, averaged 19.9 million viewers. It was the most watched NBA Finals since the Michael Jordan led Bulls era in the late ‘90s. 2 NIELSEN YEAR IN SPORTS REPORT • With their win over the Mets, the Royals brought Kansas City its rst professional sports championship in 30 years. Despite the 2015 World Series only going 5 games, compared to the 7 played in 2014, average viewership for the series was still up 6%. The Royals recent success on the diamond, with back-to-back World Series appearances, denitely has fans embracing the team like never before. Over 77% of Kansas City adults are currently fans of the team, an astounding 41% increase since 2013, a time when they struggled to get people into the ballpark, or to tune in to their games. • The Chicago Blackhawks raising Lord Stanley’s Cup in 2015 for the third time over the past six seasons has made them “America’s Team” among U.S. hockey fans. Viewership of the Hawks’ Game 6 Cup clinchers in 2010, 2013 and 2015 are 3 out of the top 4 most viewed NHL telecasts since the early 1970s. The Chicago – Tampa Cup in 2015 averaged 5.6 million viewers, which was up 11% from the 2014 Cup that featured the NY Rangers and LA Kings, residents of the two largest U.S. television markets. • FIFA certainly endured its share of o-the-eld controversy in 2015, but the scandal surrounding FIFA’s leadership in Europe did nothing to dampen the excitement in the U.S. The amazing performance of the U.S. Women’s National team at the World Cup this summer, including Carli Lloyd’s hat trick in the Final, Hope Solo’s solid goaltending and Abby Wambach’s leadership had Americans embracing this World Cup team like none other. The U.S. – Japan Final game drew 23.6 million viewers, which is up 67% over the same exact match-up in the 2011 World Cup Final. • NASCAR started its new Chase format last season and 2015 saw a change in TV broadcast partners, as coverage for the Chase switched back to NBC & NBC Sports Network. Kyle Busch completed his emotional comeback from a season-opening injury to capture his rst career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series title. Over 7.6M viewers tuned in to the championship to watch Busch battle long-time fan favorite Je Gordon, who was retiring after the race, a 46% increase from last year and the highest rating for NASCAR’s season nale since 2005. • The Kentucky Wildcats garnered the majority of the headlines during the 2014-15 college hoops season and headed into the Final Four with a perfect 38 – 0 record, but an upset by the Wisconsin Badgers denied them a perfect season and busted a lot of brackets. Even without the Wildcats, the NCAA Finals matchup between Duke and Wisconsin generated a huge audience, as 28.3 million viewers watched the Blue Devils give Coach K his fth championship. The Finals audience was up 33% over 2014 and the most watched NCAA Final in 18 years; social media engagement for the Final game was up 45% over 2014. • The Crimson Tide won their fourth College Football title under Nick Saban, but unfortunately, not as many fans tuned in to see the Tide roll to another championship. In their innite wisdom to move the seminal games to December 31st instead of January 1st, the College Football Playo Committee lost plenty of casual college football fans to New Year’s Eve festivities. While the Orange and Cotton Bowls still drew strong viewership numbers when compared to the major bowl games of the BCS era, viewership was down 45% and 34% from their respective seminal games last season. I hope you enjoy these highlights from across Nielsen’s wealth of consumer and media insights. 2015 continued to prove that sports content, across all media platforms, continues to ourish and prosper! Sincerely, Stephen Master NIELSEN YEAR IN SPORTS REPORT Copyright © 2016 The Nielsen Company 3 SPORTS CONSUMPTION STRONG DESPITE MEDIA FRAGMENTATION Sports accounted Over the last 10 years, the media market has undergone a drastic transformation, for 93 of the top which has positively affected sports on TV. There is an enormous amount of sports content to choose from and a shocking amount of hours viewed. In 2015, there were 100 live viewed over 127,000 hours of sports programming available on broadcast and cable TV and 31+ billion hours spent viewing sports, which is up 160% and 41% respectively TV programs from 2005. in 2015, compared While the rise in time-shifted viewing largely altered viewership trends for most program genres, live viewing remains the standard for sports. According to TV data from Q4 2015, 95% of total sports program viewing happened live. In comparison, to 14 in 2005 only 66% of “General Drama” viewers watched live, likely as a result of the increased number of outlets that are now available to catch up on a missed episode. THEN AND NOW: TOP 100 LIVE TV PROGRAMS 2005 2015 14% 93% % sports programs Based on P2+ Average Audience Projections 4 NIELSEN YEAR IN SPORTS REPORT THE NEED FOR TOTAL AUDIENCE COMPARISON Nielsen is striving to ensure that digital audiences will be compared to TV audiences on an apple to apples comparison. A recent example proves the current disconnect in the way numbers are measured and reported. The NFL streaming example below demon- strates the need for this true comparison, as streaming reach was initially compared to an average minute audience on TV. COMPARABLE METRICS Reach Average Minutes Audience 15.2M NFL STREAMING AUDIENCE 1.6M 44.1M AVERAGE NFL TELECAST 18.2M 25.0M LOWESTRATED NFL TELECAST 8.4M ENGAGEMENT ON OTHER PLATFORMS While live sports are viewed on TV, sports news and updates are consumed across platforms. This trend results in sports dominating conversation via other platforms such as Social and Digital. Despite what some may think content consumption via various channels actually complements TV viewing rather than cannibalizes it. TV PROGRAMMING VS. SOCIAL TV ACTIVITY TIME SPENT ON SMARTPHONES INCREASES According to Nielsen Social, in 2015 Sports Events only make In 2015, there was over 69 billion minutes, or 1.2 billion hours, up 1.4% of TV programming and close to 50% of all Twitter spent on sports sites via smartphones. This is up an impressive TV conversation. In 2016, Nielsen Social will expand its Twitter 22% from 2014. TV measurement to include Facebook topic data for the rst time. Nielsen Social Content Ratings will be the rst solution to measure total aggregate-level program activity on Facebook and Twitter, while respecting and in full compliance with TOTAL MINUTES SPENT ON SPORTS SITES VIA SMARTPHONE consumer privacy.