The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the injunction order preventing Nielsen from requiring national data subscribers to also purchase local ratings data.

The injunction was placed in January on behalf of Cumulus Media as part of its lawsuit accusing Nielsen of illegally leveraging its dominance over national and local radio audience data to stifle rivals and charge inflated prices.

The panel of judges wrote, “We find that the District Court did not abuse its discretion by determining that Nielsen effectively coerced Cumulus into purchasing its local data in certain markets that Cumulus did not otherwise want. We also find that the District Court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that Nielsen’s conduct had anticompetitive effects in the tied market or in rejecting Nielsen’s proffered procompetitive justification.”

The lawsuit arose from a 2024 Nielsen policy change prohibiting broadcast networks that operate a local station in a Nielsen-measured market and do not subscribe to Nielsen’s local
ratings data in that market from purchasing Nielsen’s Nationwide product with the inclusion of data for that specific market. Nielsen said it adopted the policy to “stop national broadcast customers from sharing Nationwide with their local affiliates for free, making decisions for those local affiliates based on information in Nationwide, or extracting the relevant local data from Nationwide without paying for it.” Cumulus argued that the anticompetitive behavior prevented it from acting as a free buyer as it only wanted to purchase Nielsen’s national data and get local data from a competitor.

A lower court ruling that was upheld today noted that the standalone national offer was priced ten times more than it normally paid for national information that it didn’t give Cumulus a meaningful choice at all.

Cumulus’ lawsuit against Nielsen continues to proceed as it seeks monetary damages and a permanent court order blocking the policy.