NFL Huddles with Nielsen

The National Football League has signed a license agreement for Nielsen Sports’ Sponsorship Scorecard, the first service to provide ratings and verification for sponsored-placed media in all televised sporting events, officials said Wednesday.

“The NFL and its clubs are committed to helping sponsors quantify and grow their return on investment,” NFL director of research Cary Meyers said in a prepared statement. “To that end, we continue putting significant resources against assigning a value to all tangible and intangible elements of our partnerships, including media exposure.”

So far, 14 teams have signed up for Sponsorship Scorecard, which launched in July 2004. It allows advertisers and teams to know how many TV viewers, by key demographic groups, see their sponsorship elements and, for the first time, to understand their ROI with this medium.

“The NFL is at the forefront of the sports-marketing industry,” Nielsen Ventures general manager Ron Schneier said in a prepared statement.

“With this new innovative service, the NFL will be able to more accurately demonstrate to their sponsors the media value of their investment,” he added. “Starting with the 2005 season, the NFL can now report sponsorship television impressions and provide streaming videos of actual captures of sponsored placed media. We first tested this service with the NFL during Super Bowl XXXIX, and we were all impressed by the sizable ratings achieved by their sponsors.”