Perhaps unsurprisingly, the NFL’s first online-only experiment did not generate as many viewers as a typical televised game.
The Week 7 Bills/Jaguars NFL International Series game, which was available only via Yahoo! livestream outside of the home markets, had an average per-minute audience of 1.6 million viewers in the U.S. and 2.4 million worldwide. The figures, obtained from Sports Business Daily and CNN Money, do not include viewers in Buffalo and Jacksonville who watched on television.
By comparison, the NFL’s previous 9:30 AM games from London had 9.9 million viewers (Jets/Dolphins on CBS in Week 4) and 8.5 million (Lions/Falcons on FOX last season). While viewers-per-minute is the same measure Nielsen uses for television programs, it should be noted that the Nielsen figures are based on a sample of the population.
Overall, the game attracted 15.2 million unique viewers, generating 33.6 million streams. According to an NFL official paraphrased by Sports Business Daily, “an individual stream was counted if viewers stayed and watched for more than three seconds.” As SBD noted, the game was set to autoplay for anyone who went to the Yahoo.com homepage.
(Sun. numbers from Sports Business Daily, CNN Money, NFL Communications)
