As expected, Netflix boasted quite an impressive audience for its two Christmas Day NFL matchups.
The Chiefs-Steelers and Ravens-Texans games, the first-ever NFL games on the streamer, put up an unduplicated audience of nearly 65 million U.S. viewers on December 25, according to Live+Same Day data from Nielsen.
The latter game, the second of the day, took home a slightly larger audience, no doubt thanks to a halftime performance from Beyoncé.
The Baltimore Ravens’ victory over the Houston Texans managed an average minute audience of 24.3M viewers, and U.S. viewership peaked with more than 27M viewers during the halftime show. It was the most-watched Christmas Day NFL game on record (since 2001) among the 18-34 demo, with 5.1M tuning in.
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Meanwhile, the Chiefs kicked off the day by beating the Steelers to an AMA of 24.1M viewers.
For reference, these audiences are nearly on par with the usual broadcast audiences for Christmas Day NFL matchups, though slightly lower. Last year, a Chiefs-Raiders game became the most-watched Christmas Day regular-season game ever with 29.2M viewers. The Eagles-Giants took home 29M that day, while the 49ers-Ravens managed 27.1M.
Where Netflix will likely show off its advantage is with the global audiences for these games, though that data is not available yet; Netflix says that more numbers will be released on December 31. This data is based on fast nationals from Nielsen, which do include out-of-home viewing and CBS local market viewing along with mobile and web data from Netflix and NFL+ mobile viewing from the NFL.
This year marked the start of a three-season deal for Netflix to stream NFL games on Christmas Day, and these numbers certainly bode well for the years to come. Under the deal, the streamer will air at least one holiday game in 2025 and 2026.
Netflix pulled out all the stops to attract a monster audience, including a kickoff performance from Mariah Carey and, of course, the buzzy Beyoncé halftime show that rivaled any Super Bowl performance. Anyone who missed it will be able to stream Beyoncé’s show as a stand-alone special later this week.