New Crosstab feature also gives rights holders, teams and brands flexibility to compare fandom characteristics across sports, teams or countries


NEW YORK, September 2, 2020 – Nielsen (NYSE: NLSN) has unveiled new enhancements to its breakthrough Fan Insights platform enabling even better visibility into the interests, media consumption behaviors, brand attitudes and purchasing habits of sports fans around the world. Expanded country coverage and new reporting capabilities including enhanced Crosstab functionality empower global sports properties and brands with critical data and actionable insights to inform smarter decision-making around sponsorship, fan engagement and media rights investment.

The robust Nielsen Fan Insights platform now includes data for 26 of the world’s most dynamic sports markets. Newly added are the six largest southeast Asian economies of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Data forAustralia, Canada, Mexico, Poland, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is also now available. These new countries complement Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Spain, U.K and U.S. which have been available since 2019.

Sponsors and brands can leverage Nielsen Fan Insights data to size and make decisions about potential audiences across a wide variety of parameters. For instance, a brand could compare football fans to badminton fans in southeast Asian countries and drill into demographics, media consumption habits and other interests to determine which audience aligns best with their unique marketing objectives. 

Marco Nazzari, Managing Director, International at Nielsen Sports, says:

In today’s global sports market, data and the insights it provides have the ability to provide a clear competitive advantage. Nielsen Fan Insights can deliver an edge in the high-stakes global sports sponsorship and marketing game – one in which a clear understanding of fans is critical.

The latest product release includes new Crosstab enhancements which allow users to design and run customized queries against the Nielsen Fan Insights datasets. This feature opens up all new contingency table analysis capabilities for researchers tasked with gleaning critical insights from large data sets. For example, a sports rights holder such as an NFL team could target potential sponsors based on how likely their fans are to purchase a new car or switch mobile carriers within the next year. After identifying “in-market” consumers for products or services among its base, the rights holder can then use Nielsen Fan Insights data to build a compelling case for why they are an effective marketing vehicle for the brand. 

As globalization advances, Nielsen Fan Insights provides new ways of looking at the world and the sports fans who populate it. It shows the total sports fan population for the six newly added southeast Asian countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) amounts to nearly 210 million consumers. This massive addressable market represents significant opportunities for sponsors and brands to reach target audiences. Drilling into the data reveals these insights:

  • Football is the most popular sport in Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam and second most popular in Indonesia and Malaysia.
  • Badminton is the most popular sport in Indonesia and Malaysia and second most popular in Singapore.
  • Basketball reigns supreme as the most popular sport in the Philippines and the NBA is the league generating the highest fan interest there.
  • Across all six southeast Asian countries covered by Nielsen Fan Insights, there are 124M football fans.
  • FIFA World Cup is the most popular sporting event across Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
  • The Asian Games rank in the top five in fan interest among events tracked in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. 
  • English Premier League ranks number two in Singapore and Vietnam, three in Malaysia and four in Thailand in terms of most popular league.
  • The Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers, Chicago Bulls, Miami Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers are the five most popular NBA teams in the Philippines.

The Nielsen Fan Insights platform is made possible by the unique combination of Nielsen’s world class media measurement and sports industry media valuation and analysis capabilities. Through Nielsen Fan Insights, users can understand what fans are actually buying, watching and listening to across media sources and assess the effectiveness of sponsorship and fan engagement activities.

For more information, visit nielsensports.com/nielsen-fan-insights