Santa delivered just what the NFL had been wishing for this Christmas. Instead of wrapped presents or stocking stuffers, the league unwrapped a historic gift on Christmas day: its two most-streamed games ever. Not bad for the NFL’s debut game on the streaming giant.
Combined, the Kansas City-Pittsburgh and Baltimore-Houston games drew 65 million viewers in total. Both games are now No. 1 and No. 2 for most streamed NFL games ever. The Ravens-Texans game narrowly surpassed the Chiefs-Steelers, with 24.3 million average viewers, peaking over 27 million thanks in large part to the Beyoncé halftime show.
Videos by VICE
It’s fair to say there were probably a ton of Swifties tuning in to the first game, too, to see if Taylor Swift would be in attendance to watch boyfriend Travis Kelce playing for Kansas City (spoiler: she was).
“Bringing our members this record-breaking day of two NFL games was the best Christmas gift we could have delivered,” said Bela Bajaria, Netflix Chief Content Officer. “We’re thankful for our partnership with the NFL, all of our wonderful on-air talent, and let’s please not forget the electrifying Beyoncé and the brilliant Mariah Carey.”
To give you some context on how high these Christmas numbers were, let’s take a quick look at the NBA. The basketball league is known for “owning” the holiday, but the NFL’s foray into Christmas streaming made that claim look a little shaky. The NBA aired five games airing, with the highest totalling a mere 7.7 million (although NBA ratings were the best they’ve been for five years, for what it’s worth).
The NFL began airing games on streamers in 2017, but the first time a game was exclusive to a streaming service was 2020’s San Francisco-Arizona game on Amazon Prime. The league also introduced the first ever playoff exclusive game last season on Peacock.
Netflix has previously aired one-off events in golf, tennis and boxing, but this was the first live partnership between the streamer and one of the USA’s major sports leagues. In addition to the two Christmas Day games this year, Netflix announced in May that it will also be airing at least one other Christmas game in both 2025 and 2026.
