Kalshi spent $41.3 million on national TV advertising this year — more than the entire sports-betting category spent in all of 2025 — as prediction-market operators displaced sportsbooks as the engine of betting ad growth around live sports.

National linear TV spend from betting brands hit $269.8 million through Aug. 31, up 40% year-over-year, according to iSpot data shared with Ad Age. Polymarket added another $7.4 million after spending nothing on television a year ago. The ad-dollar shift is landing while the legal status of sports-focused prediction contracts remains unsettled: a Ninth Circuit ruling against Kalshi and Polymarket's sports contracts in Nevada conflicts with a Third Circuit decision in Philadelphia, setting up a potential Supreme Court fight.

Leagues remain split on the category. The NHL, MLB and MLS have struck licensing deals with one or both platforms. The NFL, NBA and top women's leagues are holdouts — for the NFL, a sticking point is its discomfort with betting markets tied to player injuries.

Nielsen's third currency change in 20 months

Nielsen's expanded co-viewing methodology, first piloted around Super Bowl LX where it showed a 4.19% lift to viewership, rolled into the company's standard measurement at the end of August, just ahead of the college football and NFL seasons. It is the third major shift to Nielsen's currency in roughly 20 months, following last September's Big Data + Panel integration and an earlier expansion of out-of-home measurement.

Nearly every comparison to last season now carries an asterisk. Leagues and networks broadly benefited from the earlier changes — NFL viewership hit a 36-year high last season, up 10% year-over-year, largely attributed to Big Data + Panel. But the NFL has been skeptical of the co-viewing wrinkle. League EVP Hans Schroeder and others have pushed back on how the change interacts with CTV weighting and Spanish-language measurement. NBC Sports dropped its own blended-ratings approach this year in favor of straight Nielsen numbers for its opening NFL game.

ESPN raises DTC prices into football season

ESPN raised direct-to-consumer prices effective Sept. 17. ESPN Unlimited jumped from $29.99 to $31.99 per month ($299.99 to $319.99 annually), while the scaled-down ESPN Select tier rose from $12.99 to $13.99 monthly — the first increase since the standalone product launched roughly a year ago. Prices for the Disney+/Hulu/ESPN bundles held steady, preserving a pricing edge for bundled subscribers.

ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro used an internal memo to tout record digital and social engagement in year one, including nearly 230 million unique fans in June, as justification for the hike heading into the sport's busiest stretch of the calendar.

By the numbers

Ohio State vs. Texas set a bar for the second year running. ABC averaged 13.99 million viewers for Texas' comeback win on Sept. 12, the most-watched Week Two college football game on record and the most-watched regular-season game on an ESPN platform in a decade, peaking at 16.4 million. Michigan's win over Oklahoma drew 8.2 million on Fox, up 31% year-over-year, and Alabama-Kentucky pulled 7.3 million on ABC.

The NFL's opener fared worse. The Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl LX rematch averaged 25.1 million on NBC/Peacock, the weakest kickoff audience since 2022 and down from last year's Cowboys-Eagles opener at 28.3 million. The 13-10 game — with Sam Darnold exiting early and Drake Maye throwing three interceptions — still marked a fourth straight kickoff over 25 million, and the 18-49 demo hit its best mark in five years. NBC's Cowboys-Giants "Sunday Night Football" opener topped the week at 25.7 million (up 4%), Eagles-Commanders drew 20.3 million on Fox, and ESPN's Broncos-Chiefs Monday opener averaged 23.2 million. Netflix's NFL debut in Australia, 49ers-Rams from Melbourne, averaged 18.5 million U.S. viewers, peaking at 21.3 million.

WWE's "Raw" held steady on Netflix: the Sept. 7 episode in Mexico City drew 2.6 million global views and 4.5 million hours watched, seventh among English-language programs worldwide, fifth in the U.S.

Sponsorships and distribution deals

Celsius became the official energy drink sponsor of ESPN's "College GameDay." Beyond branding, the deal includes physical activations at select stops — an energy stage next to the main set, a fan cam, and the traveling Celsius Combine that turns fans into participants. The brand already has deep campus investments through student ambassadors, university athletics deals and athlete partnerships.

Yahoo Sports partnered with Apple TV on alternate broadcasts of "Friday Night Baseball" and MLS matches, hosted by Yahoo's own talent. "Baseball Bar-B-Cast" hosts Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman called the first two innings of games on Sept. 4 and Sept. 18, while "The Cooligans" duo Alexis Guerreros and Christian Polanco handled the Sept. 16 Campeones Cup and an Oct. 28 Inter Miami-FC Cincinnati match using MLS Productions' expanded camera package, including a referee cam and an iPhone-only feed.

The NFL opened a new category with a multiyear deal naming PayPal a league sponsor, and Fanatics-owned Topps signed a 20-year exclusive extension as the league's official trading-card licensee.

Paramount+ signed a multiyear deal with T-Mobile Arena, brokered by AEG Global Partnerships, renaming the venue's two-acre outdoor space Paramount+ Plaza and installing the streamer as Exclusive Streaming Partner. The partnership debuted around Zuffa Boxing's Garcia-Benn fight week, including a "MobLand" fan lounge called "the Cube."

On distribution, Monumental Sports Network's streaming service Monumental+ became available directly through Prime Video, extending reach for Capitals, Wizards and Mystics fans. GM Friday Abernethy framed the move as meeting fans on a platform they already use. The Charlotte Hornets named DAZN their exclusive DTC streaming home, offering fans in the Carolinas a $19.99/month Monthly Pass, a $24.99/month Monthly Pass Ultimate, and annual equivalents at $119.99 and $139.99.

Personnel and programming moves

"Front Office Sports Tonight," backed by RedBird IMI and former CNN chief Jeff Zucker, premiered Sept. 18 as a nationally syndicated 30-minute show on the business of sports, clearing more than 85% of the country and 49 of the top 50 markets across Fox, Hearst, Nexstar, Sinclair, Gray and Scripps stations. ESPN signed Joe Buck to a six-year extension worth roughly $18 million annually, per The Athletic's Andrew Marchand. NFL Media brought back Andrew Siciliano, Colleen Wolfe and Mike Yam, and added analyst Trevor Sikkema and creator Brett Kollmann.

With Nielsen's methodology, prediction-market legality and ad dollars all in motion at once, every sports ratings story this season will require reading the fine print.