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YouTube drew a global average audience of 17.3 million for its live coverage of the NFL’s game Friday in Brazil between the Chiefs and Chargers, a somewhat underwhelming number that failed to meet initial expectations of setting a league streaming record.
The figure, including an average-minute audience of 16.2 million in the U.S. and 1.1 million elsewhere, does represent a 14% improvement in domestic viewership from the 14.2 million in the U.S. who tuned in last year on Peacock for the league’s initial game in São Paulo between the Eagles and Packers. The NBCUniversal-owned Peacock, however, is a subscription-based service, while the game on Google’s YouTube was available for free to a worldwide audience.
Further lifting hopes for the YouTube game was the presence of the Chiefs, the league’s top viewership draw. Kansas City and Los Angeles played a competitive contest, with the Chargers prevailing 27–21.
Despite all that, the Christmas 2024 doubleheader on Netflix that averaged more than 24 million viewers remains the NFL high-water mark for streaming. The Chiefs-Chargers game, however, did set a company record for the most concurrent viewers of a livestream on YouTube.
The YouTube results, meanwhile, were not part of Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel audience measurement methodology and instead were the result of a custom process—a situation that rankled many other networks, including Fox and ESPN. The situation there largely was one of timing, as YouTube did not complete an extended auditing and integration process with Nielsen for first-party streaming data before the game.
More Pushback
That lack of full inclusion into the Big Data + Panel also means the Brazil game was the first in the NFL’s 2025 regular season to have a publicly released audience number, beating the Thursday night kickoff game between the Cowboys and Eagles.
“Not the same approach as the rest of us, nor [Media Rating Council] accredited. Conclusion … their rating is not a fair comp,” tweeted ESPN SVP of research Flora Kelly on Friday.
Kelly reiterated that sentiment in a supplemental comment on Monday.
“With no transparency into the methodology I have no idea what these numbers mean,” she tweeted. “That’s the problem with an approach like this and why clear and transparent methodology matters.”
Fox Sports president of insights and analytics Mike Mulvihill then questioned why YouTube did not complete that data integration process with Nielsen, something expected to take about eight weeks.
“This game was announced four months ago,” Mulvihill tweeted. “What would have been sufficient time?”
Front Office Sports queried Nielsen on the same issue last week, and has yet to receive a response.
Friday’s game reached more than 230 countries and territories, YouTube said. The pregame show, featuring a mix of NFL legends and YouTube creators, averaged 2.4 million viewers, while the postgame show garnered 5.9 million.
The rare placement of an NFL game on a Friday night again took advantage of a loophole in the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, aimed in part at protecting high school and college football. This maneuver will not be repeated next year, however, as the September 2026 calendar falls quite differently.
