Pair of Christmas NFL games on Netflix set streaming records
About 65 million combined viewers watched a pair of NFL games on Netflix on Christmas Day to set streaming records.
The matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Pittsburgh Steelers scored an average of 24.1 million viewers, and the Baltimore Ravens’ win over the Houston Texans averaged 24.3 million viewers, making the games the most streamed NFL games in U.S. history, according to Nielsen, the NFL said in a statement Thursday.
Viewership for Ravens-Texans spiked with the “Beyonce Bowl” — the much-hyped Beyoncé performance at halftime — with more than 27 million viewers, Netflix said Thursday in a statement.
The NFL said it was thrilled with the Christmas Day numbers.
“Fans in all 50 states and over 200 countries around the world watched some of the league’s brightest stars along with a dazzling performance by Beyoncé in a historic day for the NFL,” Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s executive vice president of media distribution, said in the Netflix statement.
Netflix and the NFL have a three-season partnership to broadcast Christmas games, Netflix said.
Though the holiday football matchups — which were regular-season games — set streaming records, they were far from the biggest sporting event on Netflix in recent weeks. Last month, it broadcast a boxing match between 58-year-old legendary champion Mike Tyson and Jake Paul. More than 60 million tuned in for the fight.
And how did the Christmas Day viewership stack up to the biggest game of the year, the Super Bowl? Last season’s championship game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers drew 123.4 million viewers. It was shown on CBS, the NFL Network, Univision, Paramount+, NFL+ and ViX, a Spanish-language streaming service.
CBS said the game was the most-watched telecast in history, beating the 2023 Super Bowl between the Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles, which nabbed 115 million total viewers.
