In a repeat of last year, the NFL’s streaming-exclusive Christmas Day audience took a hit overall but set a new record on the platform.
NFL Christmas Day games averaged 22.9 million viewers across Netflix and Amazon Prime Video (including local over-the-air simulcasts in the home markets), trailing only the past two years as the league’s highest average on the holiday since 2011. Viewership declined 5% from last year’s two-game average of more than 24 million on Netflix and 20% from two years ago, when the league averaged nearly 29 million for a broadcast network tripleheader on CBS, FOX and ABC.
Though down overall, the Christmas slate was highlighted by a streaming-record 27.5 million viewers for Lions-Vikings on Netflix — up 13% from the previous record of 24.3 million for Ravens-Texans in the same window on Christmas last year. Keep in mind that between last Christmas and now, Nielsen has expanded its out-of-home viewing sample to cover 100 percent of markets and shifted to a new “Big Data + Panel” methodology that combines its existing panel with data from smart TVs, set-top boxes and select providers’ first-party streaming data.
The Vikings’ win, which peaked with 30 million viewers, delivered the tenth-largest audience of the NFL season (including Adobe Analytics data for NBC games).
Netflix now owns the three-largest streaming-exclusive NFL audiences, with last year’s two Christmas games ranking second and third. In fourth place is last year’s Steelers-Ravens Wild Card game on Amazon Prime Video. (Steelers-Ravens ranks as the highest rated of those games, pending final results for Lions-Vikings.)
Earlier in the day, Netflix averaged 19.9 million for Cowboys-Commanders — down 17% from Chiefs-Steelers last year (24.1M). While it is generally assumed that the Cowboys can draw regardless of their record, neither Dallas nor Washington is a playoff team this year.
Shifting to primetime, Broncos-Chiefs averaged 21.06 million in the season finale of NFL “Thursday Night Football” on Amazon Prime Video — the largest audience for “TNF” since it moved to Amazon in 2022.
While the “TNF” package has included Christmas games — most recently in 2021, when Browns-Packers averaged 28.59 million on FOX and NFL Network on a Saturday afternoon — this year marked the first time that the NFL has ever aired games on Christmas when the holiday fell on a Thursday. As a result, Broncos-Chiefs ranks as the most-watched Thursday edition of “TNF” since Saints-Cowboys on FOX and NFL Network in 2018 (21.40M). (Unlike the old “TNF” package, which included a number of Saturday games, Amazon’s package is Thursday-exclusive. Its Black Friday game is a separate contract.)
All three Christmas Day games appeared to be at the top of the marquee when the schedule was announced in May. The Lions and Vikings were atop the NFC last season, the Commanders made the NFC title game and the Cowboys and Chiefs were the league’s two biggest draws. But only the Lions and Broncos were still in the playoff hunt by Christmas.
As is no surprise, the NFL easily outdrew the competing five-game NBA Christmas Day slate, which averaged 5.5 million — officially up 4% from last year and that league’s largest audience on the holiday since 2018, with all of the attendant methodological caveats.
This year was the second-straight in which the NBA’s Christmas audience increased and the NFL’s declined. As may not be a total coincidence, it was also the second-straight year that all five NBA games aired on broadcast television and each of the NFL games aired exclusively on streaming.
Unlike last year — and unlike the NBA — the NFL did not publicize a reach figure for its Christmas games. The three games reached 76 million viewers, but the league said that it has been unable to verify reach figures since Nielsen began its rollout of “Big Data + Panel” earlier this fall. “The NFL continues to work with Nielsen on the reach metric and to evaluate additional data throughout the season,” the league said in a Wednesday statement. “We hope to have a reach metric that we feel comfortable using around NFL games and events in the future as it helps to illustrate the total audience viewing our properties.”
The NBA announced a reach figure of 47.19 million earlier Wednesday. Reach is defined as the number of viewers who watched at least one minute of the telecast. The NBA games spanned more than 13 hours and the NFL games more than ten.
It should be noted that for as much attention as the NFL’s Christmas Day slate has received in recent years, the league averaged nearly twice as many viewers for its Thanksgiving Day tripleheader. Those three games averaged 44.7 million across CBS, FOX and NBC.
