Nielsen is firing back at Cumulus Media’s antitrust lawsuit with counterclaims accusing the broadcaster of secretly sharing proprietary radio ratings data with rival Eastlan Ratings. The audio measurement company is seeking damages and additional relief through the court.
The counterclaims, filed on February 2 in the Southern District of New York, represent a new front in the dispute between the two companies. Cumulus filed its original antitrust complaint in October, challenging Nielsen’s Network Policy and Subscriber First Policy as anticompetitive. Nielsen denied all allegations in Cumulus’s complaint and asserted 26 affirmative defenses, including that the complaint fails to state facts sufficient to support a claim and that Nielsen’s policies advance legitimate business interests.
Now, Nielsen alleges Cumulus violated multiple provisions of the parties’ 2023-2025 Services Agreement by providing Nielsen’s confidential ratings data to Eastlan during early 2025.
According to the filing, Cumulus and Westwood One Chief Insights Officer Pierre Bouvard sent an email to Eastlan CEO Michael Gould attaching Nielsen’s confidential and proprietary ratings data. Nielsen’s legal team references testimony from Eastlan CEO Michael Gould on December 11 that “attested to this fact,” but did not provide specific details about what exact data or reports Bouvard allegedly shared.
Nielsen simply describes the shared information generally as “Nielsen Information,” “Nielsen’s confidential and proprietary ratings data,” and data that would allow Eastlan to “benchmark its data against Nielsen’s to improve its own measurements” and “optimize its data for use in radio advertising sales,” but no specific reports, markets, time periods, or data formats are identified in the counterclaims.
Nielsen and Cumulus have maintained a contractual relationship since 1997, most recently under a Services Agreement effective January 1, 2023, through December 31, 2025. The parties began negotiating a contract renewal in May 2025.
The Services Agreement contains provisions prohibiting Cumulus from sharing Nielsen’s data with unauthorized third parties.
Nielsen is seeking “actual damages or other relief proven at trial, including all direct, indirect, and consequential damages, plus all applicable interest,” with no specific monetary figure provided in the counterclaims. The ratings provider also wants a declaratory judgment that Cumulus breached the contract, and an injunction preventing Cumulus from sharing Nielsen data with unlicensed parties. The company is also demanding that Cumulus cease all use of data obtained under the 2023 Services Agreement.
Eastlan has emerged as a central figure in the dispute, with Cumulus pointing to the measurement firm as evidence that no viable alternative to Nielsen’s national ratings exists. In testimony, Gould confirmed that Eastlan “does not currently offer a national ratings service,” though it “could develop a ‘nationwide-like product’ in one year if it had a customer or customers willing to cover the cost of collecting the data.”
Gould acknowledged that even with a national product, Eastlan would face “pushback from advertisers and advertising agencies for the foreseeable future” because Nielsen remains “the currency with advertisers and agencies” and “how advertising is primarily traded.” Cumulus argues that Eastlan’s unrealized capability is “evidence and casualty” of Nielsen’s gatekeeping power, while Nielsen contends that Eastlan’s recent expansion into larger local markets shows it is “entering and succeeding” where it chooses to compete.
On December 30, US District Judge Jeannette Vargas granted Cumulus a preliminary injunction blocking Nielsen’s Network Policy, ruling that Cumulus showed a substantial likelihood of success on its Sherman Act monopolization claims. Judge Vargas found that Nielsen used what she called a “constructive tie” by refusing to quote reasonable standalone pricing for its Nationwide report or presenting rates “so exorbitant as to make it economically unfeasible.”
The judge wrote that Nielsen’s pricing effectively forced broadcasters to buy bundled services they didn’t want, calling the company’s conduct “coercive.” Nielsen warned in response that the injunction could force it to retire its Nationwide report entirely, potentially eliminating the central measurement currency for national radio advertising.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has granted Nielsen’s motion to pause enforcement of the preliminary injunction in the Cumulus case, meaning the injunction is temporarily not in effect.
An initial pre-trial conference is scheduled for March 17.
