First Netflix Games Set NFL Record, Become Most-Streamed Ever
- by Wayne Friedman , December 26, 2024
Netflix delivered strong NFL broadcast-like viewership for its exclusive and first-time NFL airings on Christmas Day -- averaging 24.2 million U.S. viewers for two games, according to Nielsen -- and averted any industry concerning buffering or latency issues.
In addition, Netflix football airings became the most-streamed NFL games in U.S. history -- surpassing those on NBCUniversal’s Peacock streamer, which in January aired an NFL Wild Card playoff game between the Miami Dolphins-Kansas City Chiefs.
Peacock earned an average 22.9 million Nielsen-measured viewers.
The first Netflix game on Wednesday -- which featured an easy win for the current Super Bowl champions Kansas City Chiefs, who beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 29-10 -- posted 24.1 million average minute audience viewers.
Game Two, in which the Baltimore Ravens beat the Houston Texans 31-2 in a blowout, took in 24.3 million viewers.
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The two games amassed a total of 65 million viewers -- with 48.4 million coming from Netflix national airings, and 17 million viewers coming from CBS local TV market viewing, out-of-home viewing, mobile and web data from Netflix, as well as the league’s NFL+ mobile viewing.
The games aired in 200 countries, with global TV viewing data set to be released on December 31.
Netflix says the Baltimore Ravens-Houston Texans game was the most-watched Christmas Day game on record among young 18-34 viewers -- with 5.1 million U.S. viewers, according to Nielsen records dating back to 2001.
This is the first of a three-year, exclusive NFL Christmas Day two-game deal for Netflix, reportedly costing the big streamer $150 million per year.
CBS Sports produced the Netflix games. NFL Media produced the pre- post- and studio half-time programming. EverWonder Studio produced the NFL Christmas Gameday show.
Industry analysts had been concerned that quality of the airings might be dinged by latency broadband issues.
Netflix had major problems in this regard on November 18 when it aired the Jake Paul/Mike Tyson boxing match.
Sixty million households watched the Paul vs. Tyson event live around the world.
Netflix's NFL broadcast "averted any industry concerning buffering or latency issues."
Thats laughable. The latency and pixelation issues plagued the entire live broadcast and complaints were trending on X for hours. Get a better source than the platform broadcasting the event.
I was surprised that wasn't headlines on the front pages about the pixelation issues on Yahoo, AOL etc. I didn't watch the NFL Christmas Day games since I'm one of the few that doesn't have Netflix I watched the NBA on ESPN/ABC on Christmas Day.