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Netflix drew exactly the same U.S. audience that YouTube did last year for an international game in Week 1 of an NFL season. That’s where the similarities end, though.
Last Thursday’s 49ers-Rams game from Melbourne, Australia, won in dominant fashion by San Francisco, averaged 18.5 million viewers in the U.S. on Netflix, and another 3.2 million internationally. The domestic number was essentially identical to the figure of the opening week game in the 2025 NFL season on YouTube involving the Chiefs and Chargers, who played in Brazil.
The Netflix game, however, was played on a Thursday instead of the Friday slotting for the Brazil game last year. Netflix is a subscription-based service compared to the free distribution on YouTube, and it also used a standard Nielsen audience measurement as opposed to YouTube’s custom, revised, and much maligned viewership methodology.
There was a stronger international presence this time around, though, as the Netflix non-U.S. audience of 3.2 million easily surpassed the 1.2 million international viewers that tuned for the Chiefs-Chargers game last year. For the 49ers-Rams contest, viewers tuned in from more than 200 countries and territories, giving further support to the NFL’s growing global ambitions.
The audience figure for the 49ers-Rams game, which quickly became a rout for San Francisco, also followed the downbeat start to the NFL season last Wednesday, which saw an 11% viewership drop for the kickoff game involving the Patriots and Seahawks on NBC.
While the NFL and Netflix certainly had higher hopes for the 49ers-Rams contest, the figure represents a fairly decent start to the season on active Thursday night time slot that saw plenty of sports competition from events such as the women’s semifinals in the US Open tennis tournament, MLB pennant-race baseball, and a college football game involving No. 5 Miami.
By comparison, Netflix’s Christmas Day doubleheader last year averaged 23.7 million viewers in the U.S.
Looking Ahead
The Australia NFL game, meanwhile, represents the first of Netflix’s newly expanded five-game league package this season. Next up for the streaming giant will be the league’s first-ever Thanksgiving Eve game, involving the Rams and Packers.
Netflix will then be back again with another Christmas doubleheader and a Week 18 game with playoff implications.
