How many homes the sports networks are available in

It's more convoluted than I'd like these days...

TL;DR: 7 of the 20 measured networks that air live sports, to varying degrees, utilize “dynamic ad insertion” (DAI) with the live TV streaming services like YouTube TV. DAI gets counted differently. There’s the full distribution — the number of homes those networks are in and getting paid fees on (traditional national advertising where everyone gets the same ads + DAI), and the number of homes those networks are in for national Nielsen measurement purposes (just the traditional national advertising). 

Brutal, even the TL;DR is TL;DR! But here are the two sets of numbers.  For the masochists, a longer explanation follows them.

Traditional:

Full distribution with DAI included:

National TV ratings measurement is about brokering national advertising sales

And the dynamically inserted ads (DAI) aren’t sold or distributed nationally! It works the way it’s supposed to work but it’s a bit convoluted, depending on how you want to use the data.

Thankfully it’s still easy for primary ESPN since it doesn’t use DAI, and you can still provide the relevant info in a tweet.

But TNT, for example, does use DAI, and there are nearly 2 million homes it’s receiving monthly fees on that aren’t included in the traditional method.

I couldn’t come up with a better idea for presenting the info

If you have a better idea, let me know.

Networks like CBS Sports Network and SEC Network don’t subscribe to national Nielsen measurement so unless those networks order customized Nielsen reporting and release data on their own, we’ll never see the ratings and Nielsen doesn’t include them in their household universe estimates (# of homes the networks are in) reporting either.

But there are 20 networks that air live sporting events and subscribe to national Nielsen measurement and I’ve periodically distributed them.

Even back in the glory days of 2010 (then, at TVbytheNumbers, RIP) when the cable model was still in peak form, I liked providing the numbers because of the distribution differences. If one of the networks was in 100 million homes, and another was only in 80 million homes, I thought that knowledge was useful if comparing viewership between networks. 

Several years ago Nielsen began using separate breakouts for DAI and I ignored them because most of the networks I provided data for weren’t using it, and to the degree any of them were it was only a bit. But in January TUDN shifted around 8.5 million homes from traditional measurement to DAI, which is more than 25% of its base.

Who cares! Why should that matter?

When you see viewership for TUDN on sites like ShowBuzzDaily, you should consider that TUDN is only 23.3 million homes for national Nielsen measurement purposes. But if you want a better proxy of how many homes they are actually in and receiving monthly fees from the distributors on, you should use the DAI number of 31.8 million.

Actual distribution of TUDN and TruTV (which also switched some of its households to DAI since December) isn’t down as much as it looks like just based on the traditional method.

Beyond my paygrade

In the TL;DR I mentioned the networks using DAI are doing so “to varying degrees”.

It looks like TUDN is using DAI all the time with all its telecasts on YouTube TV and that networks like TNT, TBS and USA pretty clearly aren’t doing that. I can make some guesses, but how that actually works is currently beyond my understanding.