Polsat took 19.05% of all video viewing in Polish homes in September 2026, overtaking Warner Bros. Discovery to rank first among content distributors for the first time this year, according to Nielsen's All Screens Video Landscape report for the month, released today in Warsaw. Live volleyball accounted for eight of the 20 most-watched programmes of the month, all of them on Polsat channels.

In Short

Nielsen counts how much video Polish households watch on TVs, computers, phones and tablets, then ranks the companies behind that video. In September, the Polsat group came first, just ahead of Warner Bros. Discovery and public broadcaster TVP, because huge audiences watched volleyball on its channels. For advertisers, the ranking shows that a few local TV groups still collect more than half of all video time in Poland, while YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok together hold about a ninth of it.

The ranking

Nielsen published the report today, October 19, 2026. The figures cover September 2026. The press release is dated "Warsaw, Poland, 19.10.26", while the page header carries only "October 2026".

The top three distributors were separated by barely a percentage point. According to Nielsen, the top 10 for September were:

  1. Polsat: 19.05%
  2. Warner Bros. Discovery: 18.41%
  3. TVP: 18.03%
  4. Google (YouTube): 6.28%
  5. Telewizja Republika: 4.37%
  6. TV Puls: 3.74%
  7. Meta (Facebook and Instagram): 3.28%
  8. Canal+: 1.99%
  9. ByteDance (TikTok): 1.81%
  10. SPI International: 1.69%

The individual shares appear only in the chart attached to the release. The release text gives Polsat's and Warner Bros. Discovery's figures and nothing else.

On PPC Land's arithmetic, the three largest groups held 55.49% of measured viewing between them, and the top 10 together accounted for 78.65%. Polsat's lead over Warner Bros. Discovery was 0.64 percentage points. Warner Bros. Discovery, in turn, was 0.38 points ahead of TVP.

"In another notable shift within the distributor rankings, SPI International entered the top 10, edging out Netflix," according to Nielsen. The release does not give Netflix's September share. Since SPI International closed the list at 1.69%, Netflix must have fallen below that level.

Volleyball did the work

Nielsen attributes Polsat's rise to sport, and the programme data supports it. According to the release, Polsat broadcast four of the 10 and eight of the 20 most-watched programmes of September, "all of which were live volleyball matches." The Poland vs. France match on September 26 drew more than 4.8 million viewers, the second most-watched broadcast of the month.

The release does not name the most-watched broadcast. Nor does it name the tournament.

Lucyna Koba, Market Leader at Nielsen Poland, linked the result to scheduling. "The shifting rankings in September highlight just how fiercely competitive the Polish video landscape is right now," she said. "Seeing a local powerhouse like Polsat reclaim the number one spot, and traditional distributors challenging global streaming platforms for top 10 positions, demonstrates that broadcasters who invest in premium, unmissable moments can actively win back screen time."

The word "reclaim" is apt. Polsat finished 2025 in first place on a full-year basis with 18.12%, ahead of Warner Bros. Discovery at 17.97% and TVP at 17.56%, according to Nielsen's annual report, which PPC Land covered in February. It also led the monthly table a year ago. In September 2025, Polsat Group held 18.50%, with Telewizja Polska second at 17.79% and Warner Bros. Discovery third at 17.54%. Today's release states that September 2026 is the first month of this year in which Polsat ranked first. It does not say which group led the earlier months.

A year-on-year comparison

Set against September 2025, all three leaders hold larger shares now. On PPC Land's calculation, Polsat gained 0.55 percentage points, Warner Bros. Discovery 0.87 points and TVP 0.24 points. Warner Bros. Discovery and TVP have swapped places since last September.

That comparison carries a caveat. The groups are defined by Nielsen's list of channels and platforms for each month, and those lists change. The September 2025 report described Warner Bros. Discovery's portfolio as 30 television channels and three streaming platforms, and Polsat Group's as 34 channels and three digital properties. The September 2026 list attached to today's release names 28 entries for Warner Bros. Discovery, all of them channels, and 34 for Polsat, also channels. The streaming products listed a year earlier, such as Polsat Box Go, do not appear. The release does not explain the difference.

How Nielsen counts

The All Screens Video Landscape report is a different product from Nielsen's Gauge for Poland, which PPC Land covered for the same month on October 18. The Gauge splits time spent in front of television sets by delivery path: cable, satellite, terrestrial and streaming. The distributor report instead groups all viewing by the company that owns the content outlet, and it counts four screens rather than one.

According to Nielsen, the report "measures total household viewership - defined as a combination of total reach and time spent - across four screens: TVs, PCs/laptops, smartphones, and tablets." The chart's source line gives more detail: "Nielsen Media; Total Video Consolidated +7 InHome; 4 screens; Target: All4+; metrics: SHR% September 2026; TOP 10 content distributors; Other screens: smartphone, PC, tablet."

Read plainly, that means the share figure (SHR%) covers viewing by everyone aged four and over, inside the home, including programmes watched up to seven days after first broadcast. Viewing outside the home is not part of the measure. That matters for the mobile-first platforms, whose use away from home is excluded by definition.

Today's release does not restate the size of the panel behind the numbers. Previous reports in the series described a single-source panel of 3,500 households and nearly 9,700 panelists, with shares built on average minute ratings. A distributor, in Nielsen's grouping, is a holding company and every television channel or online platform attributed to it. The release attaches the full lists. Polsat's runs to 34 entries, from Polsat and Polsat News to Eleven Sports 1 and 2, TV4, TV6 and a set of music channels, under the holding Grupa Polsat. Warner Bros. Discovery's 28 include TVN, TVN24, TTV, Eurosport 1 and 2, Discovery and Cartoon Network. TVP has 16 channels, Canal+ 21 and SPI International 11, among them Kino Polska, Stopklatka and the FILMBOX+ channels. Google is represented by YouTube alone, Meta by Facebook and Instagram, ByteDance by TikTok, TV Puls by TV Puls and Puls2, and Telewizja Republika by its one channel.

This approach is a form of audience measurement built for a market in which broadcasters and global platforms compete for the same hours. It places a public broadcaster's 16 channels, a pay-TV group's sports networks and a social video app on a single scale.

Where viewing happens

The right-hand side of Nielsen's chart is arguably more revealing than the ranking itself. It splits each distributor's viewing between the TV set and the other three screens.

  • Polsat: 100% TV, 0% other screens
  • Warner Bros. Discovery: 99% TV, 1% other screens
  • TVP: 99% TV, 1% other screens
  • Google: 32% TV, 68% other screens
  • Telewizja Republika: 100% TV
  • TV Puls: 100% TV
  • Meta: 0% TV, 100% other screens
  • Canal+: 96% TV, 4% other screens
  • ByteDance: 0% TV, 100% other screens
  • SPI International: 100% TV

Seven of the top 10 are, in practice, television businesses. The three digital platforms - Google, Meta and ByteDance - held 11.37% of measured viewing between them on PPC Land's calculation. Meta and ByteDance recorded no measured viewing on TV sets at all.

YouTube is the only distributor with a real split. Its 32% TV share compares with 27% in September 2025 and 29% across the full year 2025. The direction is consistent with the growth of YouTube on connected televisions, although three data points do not make a trend.

Applying YouTube's screen split to its overall share gives a rough sense of scale. On that PPC Land approximation, about 2.0 percentage points of Google's 6.28% came from TV sets and about 4.3 points from phones, computers and tablets. The TV-set portion is close to the 2.3% of television time that Nielsen's Gauge attributed to YouTube for the same month, but the two figures rest on different bases and are not directly comparable.

Linear television's rebound

Nielsen frames September as a recovery for broadcast. "Overall video consumption rebounded in September compared to August, lifted by higher traditional linear television viewing coinciding with the launch of autumn programming schedules," according to the release. "In contrast, streaming engagement softened month-over-month, recording declines in both reach and total viewing time."

The release offers no figures for the size of either move. The Gauge for the same month gives some scale: daily time in front of TV sets rose by 7 minutes to 3 hours and 38 minutes, while streaming's share of TV-set time fell from a record 11.0% in August to 10.4%. YouTube's share of that time dropped from 2.8% to 2.3% and Netflix's from 1.9% to 1.5%.

The September pattern repeats a seasonal shift. A year earlier, Nielsen's September data showed time with traditional TV up 4.23% to 3 hours 19 minutes a day while streaming time slipped. Autumn schedules return, sport resumes, and linear television recovers ground lost over the summer.

Why the ranking matters to advertisers

Television sales in Poland are concentrated. Three groups - one private, one American-owned and one public - collect more than half of all in-home video time across four screens, and their audiences sit almost entirely on the TV set. For buyers, that means reach in Poland is still bought largely through a small number of broadcaster sales houses, whatever the growth of streaming.

Nielsen's ranking is also a commercial argument. Broadcasters cite it to show that their combined portfolios rival YouTube and Meta, and global platforms cite the screen split to show their reach beyond the living room. The Gauge series, which PPC Land has tracked month by month, already showed streaming's share of Polish TV time climbing to 10.1% in July 2025 and to a record 11.0% in August 2026 before falling back.

The distributor report shows the other side of the same market. Even at the peak of summer streaming, the three largest broadcasters together outweigh every platform in the top 10. September's figures widen that gap rather than narrow it. Whether Polsat keeps first place is a different matter. Its lead rests partly on a sporting event, and the release itself attributes the result to live volleyball. October's data, with a different sports calendar, will show how much of the gain was structural.

Gaps in the release

Several details that would sharpen the picture are missing from the release. It gives no August shares, so the month-on-month movement behind Polsat's rise is not quantified. It names no Netflix share, no reach figures and no viewing minutes. The source line limits the measure to in-home viewing, without saying how large out-of-home mobile viewing might be. And the channel lists for the major broadcasters no longer include the streaming services named a year ago, which may partly explain why Polsat now shows 0% of its viewing on other screens. That last point is PPC Land's inference; Nielsen does not address it.

One minor inconsistency: the release calls Lucyna Koba "Market Leader, Nielsen Poland" in the quote attribution and "Market Lead, Nielsen Poland" in the contact block.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Nielsen, through its Polish unit, and the content distributors it ranks: Polsat, Warner Bros. Discovery, TVP, Google (YouTube), Telewizja Republika, TV Puls, Meta, Canal+, ByteDance (TikTok) and SPI International. Netflix dropped out of the top 10.

What: Polsat took first place in Nielsen's ranking of video content distributors with a 19.05% share of in-home viewing across TVs, computers, smartphones and tablets, ahead of Warner Bros. Discovery at 18.41% and TVP at 18.03%. Live volleyball supplied eight of the month's 20 most-watched programmes, all on Polsat.

When: The report covers September 2026 and was published today, October 19, 2026. It is the first month of 2026 in which Polsat ranked first.

Where: Poland, measured in the home for viewers aged four and over, including viewing up to seven days after broadcast.

Why: The ranking shows where video time in Poland is concentrated by owner rather than by delivery path. Three broadcasters held 55.49% of measured viewing on PPC Land's calculation, almost all of it on TV sets, while YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok together held 11.37%. For advertisers and broadcasters, it indicates that live sport and autumn schedules still move audience share among the largest TV groups.