After two months of sliding down Nielsen’s media distributor gauge, Disney reclaimed its top spot as football heated up.
As the NFL and NCAA kicked off their fall football seasons, the Walt Disney Company accounted for 11.3% of TV usage in September. It posted gains over YouTube, which took the No. 2 spot with 10.6%, as well as NBCUniversal, which took third place with 9.3%.
After YouTube dominated viewing in July and NBCUniversal lead the list in August thanks to the Paris Olympics, Disney returned to lead the media distributors list — as it did in June and May — with September marking the the third consecutive monthly lead-change.
Disney also saw a 17% viewing increase in September. That’s largely due to viewing upticks for ESPN, which saw a 101% increase, and ESPN2, which scored a 165% increase. There was also a 25% boost seen by its ABC broadcast affiliates.
Disney wasn’t the only distributor to see double-digit viewing increases in September, with Fox getting an 18% boost as it jumped to account for 7.3%, while Amazon saw a 13% uptick as it closed out September with 3.7%. That marked a high for the streamer.
On the other hand, eight of the 14 media companies saw a decrease in viewing — including NBCUniversal, who fell 4.1 share points from its Olympic high in August.
The onset of the NFL season was present in Nielsen’s streaming gauge for September, which saw Amazon Prime Video get a 12% viewing bump when compared to August, largely driven by “Thursday Night Football.”
In fact, NFL games accounted for 14 of the top 15 broadcast telecasts in September, with the top three garnering over 3 billion viewing minutes each on NBC, CBS and FOX. Broadcast sports viewing was up nearly 9% compared to August, even after coming off a 44% increase the previous month due to the surge from the Olympics.
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