Record-Breaking Christmas NFL Showdowns Take Netflix by Storm!

Approximately 65 million viewers combined tuned in to watch two NFL games on Netflix on Christmas Day, setting streaming records.

The contest featuring the Kansas City Chiefs versus the Pittsburgh Steelers averaged 24.1 million viewers, while the Baltimore Ravens’ victory over the Houston Texans averaged 24.3 million viewers, making these games the most streamed NFL events in U.S. history, as reported by Nielsen, the NFL noted in an announcement on Thursday.

The viewership for the Ravens-Texans game surged during the “Beyonce Bowl” — the highly anticipated halftime performance by Beyoncé — attracting over 27 million viewers, Netflix stated on Thursday in a release.

The NFL expressed its excitement regarding the viewership numbers from Christmas Day.

“Fans from all 50 states and over 200 nations followed many of the league’s shining stars alongside an extraordinary performance by Beyoncé on a historic day for the NFL,” Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s executive vice president of media distribution, remarked in the Netflix release.

Netflix and the NFL are in a three-season collaboration for broadcasting Christmas games, according to Netflix.

Although the holiday football matches — which were part of the regular season — established streaming records, they did not overshadow the largest sporting event on Netflix in recent weeks. Last month, they aired a boxing match featuring 58-year-old iconic champion Mike Tyson and Jake Paul. More than 60 million viewers tuned in for that bout.

So how did the viewership on Christmas Day compare to the biggest game of the year, the Super Bowl? Last season’s championship clash between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers pulled in 123.4 million viewers. It aired on CBS, the NFL Network, Univision, Paramount+, NFL+, and ViX, a service for Spanish-language streaming.

CBS announced that the game stood as the most-watched broadcast in history, surpassing the 2023 Super Bowl between the Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles, which garnered 115 million total viewers.