Recently, Nielsen released its annual “Year in Sports Media” report for 2015.

Football Scoop had a very informative breakdown of the statistics that came out of the yearly review.

Here are some general takeaways:

  • 93 percent of the Top 100 live TV programs in 2015 were sports programming. That’s up from 14 percent in 2005, and is largely due to DVR and streaming technology for events that are not as time sensitive as athletic contests.
  • Sports programming made up 1.4 percent of the total television programming in 2015, but was a staggering 49.7 percent of the total Twitter TV activity. In other words, sports are what drives television discussion on social media. And for television programmers, social media discussion is a big deal.
  • The amount of time spent on sports sites with a smartphone went up from 57 minutes in 2014 to 70 minutes in 2015. Streaming probably has an impact on that as well.
  • The top five television advertisers of 2015, in terms of dollars spent on sports programming, were AT&T, Chick-Fil-A, Taco Bell, Nissan Rogue Trucks and Geico.

As it pertains to the SEC and college football, here are some interesting numbers:

  • The 25.7 television rating for Alabama’s national title win against Clemson and the 18.6 rating for the Crimson Tide’s victory against Michigan State in the semifinals were the most watched college football games of the bowl season.
  • Speaking of the CFP national title game, it was the third most watched sports broadcast of the year, trailing the Super Bowl and the NCAA men’s basketball tournament championship game.
  • The highest percentage of college football fans reside in the South and the Midwest, which is hardly a surprise.
  • The SEC actually finished second in viewership by conference. The Big Ten registered an average viewership of 8.5 million per game in 2015, with the SEC checking in at 8.1 million. The numbers for the other Power 5 confereces: ACC– 6 million, Big 12– 5 million, Pac-12– 4.5 million.