Nielsen has revised its viewership estimates for Telemundo from June 11-15, a span that included the first five days of the FIFA World Cup, resulting in audience figures that are lower by 25-29 percent than what was originally reported.
Telemundo made the announcement on Monday, issuing revised viewership figures for its matches during that period. The June 11 Mexico-South Africa match that was previously reported to have averaged 13.4 million viewers across Nielsen and Adobe Analytics has been revised downward to 10.1 million.
That is still the largest audience on record for the FIFA World Cup on Spanish-language television, pending final results for last Thursday’s Mexico-South Korea match, as well as the largest audience on any network for a group stage match not involving the United States.
The June 12 United States-Paraguay match has been revised to 7.0 million, down from an originally-reported 9.5 million, but still the most-watched USMNT match on Spanish-language TV. Brazil-Morocco on June 13 has been revised to 7.9 million, down sharply from the 11.2 million that was originally reported. The Haiti-Scotland lead-out has been revised from 6.0 to 4.3 million.
Ecuador-Ivory Coast and Netherlands-Japan on June 14 have been revised downward to 6.8 and 6.0 million, compared to the originally-reported figures of 9.2 and 8.4 million.
No explanation has been publicly given for the change.
Telemundo, like all NBCUniversal platforms, issues a viewership figure that combines a linear audience measured by Nielsen with a streaming audience tracked by Adobe Analytics. It should be noted that Telemundo said in its statement Monday that the revisions are specific to the Nielsen data.
Nielsen revisions are nothing new — the company once had to reissue viewership for a full year of viewing due to an undercount of out-of-home data — but the past year has seen data reissued for a number of high-profile events. Data was revised after the fact for both the YouTube-exclusive NFL game last September and Super Bowl 60 in February, in both cases because of issues with first-party data providers. (Nielsen prior to last year did not include first-party data in its official estimates.)
Telemundo World Cup viewership, before and after Nielsen revision
There is no indication that World Cup viewership figures on Fox Sports have been revised in any way. FOX said Monday that its coverage of the World Cup was averaging 5.70 million viewers through last Wednesday, a Nielsen-only figure that includes pre-match coverage.
England-Croatia topped the network’s Wednesday slate with 6.78 million, followed by Portugal’s match against the Democratic Republic of the Congo with 4.94 million. FS1 drew 4.04 million for Uzbekistan-Colombia and 3.86 million for Ghana-Panama.
