Sports from a Media and Audience Perspective
Your old sports marketing playbook is obsolete.
The Round Out has the new score.
Overview
Nielsen sees the numbers. The Round Out tells you what they mean.
Nielsen's The Round Out tells the developing story of the most significant expansion of sports fandom in a generation and what it means for the brands trying to win over a new wave of fans.
Hosted by insights experts Brian Fuhrer and Julie DeTraglia, the podcast pairs decades of media measurement expertise with the cultural fluency to make the numbers mean something. Brian and Julie don't just read the data they round it out, putting every figure in the context of the fans, stories, and shifts reshaping American sports.
As FIFA's official media intelligence supplier, Nielsen brings unparalleled insight to the 2026 World Cup and beyond, covering the sports, stories, and communities driving fandom's next chapter. Tune in on Apple, Spotify or wherever you want to hear about the
changing sports economy.
136.1 MILLION
soccer fans across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada combined
76%
of U.S. soccer fans are Gen Z or Millennials
27%
of the general U.S. population expects their interest in soccer to increase specifically because the 2026 World Cup
79.8 Billions
total minutes U.S. viewers spent watching soccer in 2025
Episodes
Listen Now
LATEST EPISODE
Joe Franzetta of Roku on Solving the Sports Discovery Problem
Finding what to watch has gotten harder than watching it. As leagues sell rights to more partners and games scatter across a dozen apps, the hard part of being a fan is no longer the game. It is finding the game.
Listen the full episode on:
Previous Episodes
Episode 2
Why Hispanic Sports Fans Are the Most Brand-Responsive Audience in America, with Fede Garza
Live sports remain one of the few moments where a fragmented audience still shows up at the same time, and increasingly that audience is multicultural.
33 min Jun 23, 2026
Listen the full episode on:
Episode 1
FOX's Mike Mulvihill on America's Soccer Moment and Why the 2026 World Cup Changes Everything
A new kind of American sports fan has emerged: younger, more diverse, more digital, and connected to the game long before the tournament ever reached home soil.
39 min Jun 9, 2026
Listen the full episode on:
Meet Your Hosts
Brian Fuhrer
Senior Vice President of Product Strategy and Thought Leadership at Nielsen. Over 30+ years, Brian has helped shape how the industry measures TV and streaming audiences, and is a driving force behind The Gauge, Nielsen's monthly benchmark for total TV and streaming usage. Brian is a regular voice at industry events and in trade press, relied on to demystify data and trends.
Julie DeTraglia
Head of Content & Strategic Insights at Nielsen. After senior measurement and strategy roles at Netflix, Amazon Sports, Disney, Hulu, and NBCUniversal, Julie now directs the strategy for Nielsen’s editorial marketing content, including social media, client communications, and, yes, podcasts. A recognized industry leader, she's spent her career turning data into strategy, and more women into leaders as well (Founding member of Chief, Cynopsis Top Women in Media, She Runs It Working Mother of the Year).
