• by Colin Kirkland , 9 hours ago

The future of sports marketing may be intertwined with YouTube’s live NFL broadcast from São Paulo, Brazil, where the Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers game set a record for the most concurrent viewers of a live stream on the 20-year-old social video-sharing platform.

In attempts to build a global fan base, the NFL announced earlier this year that it was bringing professional teams to international stadiums throughout the 2025 season.

And to do so, the league partnered with YouTube, the NFL’s official home of NFL Sunday Ticket, marking the first exclusive NFL game to be streamed live and for free in its entirety on YouTube and YouTube TV.

As a result, the Google-owned company says the game attracted an audience of over 17.3 million average-minute-audience (AMA), including 16.2 million AMA in the U.S. and over a million fans from over 230 countries and territories. 

To showcase YouTube’s base of popular creators, the broadcast featured exclusive content from MrBeast, Haley Kalil, Michelle Khare and Marques Brownlee; as well as live sidelines commentary and pre- and post-game hosting from influencers and NFL legends, such as Cam Newton and Derek Carr; and a halftime show from Colombian pop star Karol G.

Google has been spending about $2 billion a year for exclusive NFL Sunday Ticket rights since the 2023 season, but the tech giant has been partners with the NFL since 2015, when the league launched its YouTube channel, which has amassed over 14 million subscribers over the past decade. 

Now, as the largest streaming video service in the U.S., YouTube is using its strategic partnership to attract advertisers by combining the rise of Connected TV, AI-powered ad tools, and the unprecedented popularity of cross-platform creators.