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The NFL carried Netflix to its most-watched Christmas Day ever

By Chart R

Jan 3, 2025

After technical glitches marred its first live sporting event, the heat was on Netflix to pull off its NFL Christmas Gameday… especially since the streamer paid $150 million for the festive football doubleheader.

But it seems to have paid off: the two games averaged 26.5 million viewers in the US, making it Netflix’s most-watched Christmas Day ever. Viewers from 218 countries and territories tuned in to at least one of the games, with the Chiefs-Steelers drawing in 30 million viewers worldwide and the Ravens-Texans game attracting 31.3 million.

This marked the first of the NFL’s three-season partnership with Netflix to broadcast games on Christmas, as well as the streamer’s first foray into the NFL, giving further credence to football fixtures becoming some of the streaming sphere’s most lucrative assets. While subscribing to several platforms is a pain for fans, the fight to gain ground in the field has done little to perturb viewership. According to Nielsen data reported by Variety, NFL games comprised the entire top 10 most-watched prime-time telecasts last year, with each accumulating more than 20 million viewers.

With the sport’s near universal appeal showing few signs of waning, fixtures of the football scene like Monday Night Football (secured by ESPN for $2.7 billion per year) are increasingly valuable commodities, which streamers like Amazon’s Prime Video, Netflix, YouTube TV, and Peacock are willing to pay top dollar for.