A collection of record-setting NFL games helped push the U.S. streaming business to unprecedented heights in December.
Nielsen said last month’s findings for The Gauge, its cross-platform view of total television consumption in the country, recorded streaming hitting an all-time high of 47.5% of the market—beating the prior mark of 47.3% in July 2025.
Key to the new milestone were Netflix’s Christmas Day NFL doubleheader, which posted a short-lived league streaming record of an average of 27.5 million viewers for a Lions-Vikings game, and Amazon’s football nightcap on the holiday, which set a regular-season audience record for that company with an average of 21.06 million viewers for a Broncos-Chiefs clash.
Earlier in December, Amazon established another internal streaming record for an NFL regular-season game, averaging 19.4 million viewers for a Cowboys-Lions game that stood as its audience high for three weeks until Christmas.
Overall, the NFL games on Christmas were a key part of a nationwide total of 55.1 billion streaming minutes, a single-day U.S. high in Nielsen measurements. The figure beat the prior mark, the 51.2 billion minutes generated on Christmas Day 2024, by 8%.
Among the other milestones in the latest edition of Nielsen’s The Gauge:
- Streaming on Christmas captured 54% of all U.S. television usage on the day, the largest single-day share of TV ever recorded by the category. It was just the second time that streaming passed the 50% threshold, having previously done so on Dec. 13.
- Netflix and Amazon combined for a whopping 22.5% of all U.S. TV usage on Christmas, with the trio of NFL games joined by Netflix’s release of new episodes of Stranger Things.
- Total streaming in December rose 3%, doubling the broader increase in TV usage during the month.
Accelerating Trend
Streaming previously hit an industry inflection point last spring, passing traditional linear television to become the largest source of TV consumption. Since then, the migration toward streaming has only amplified.
During December, streaming captured 47.5% of the market, with market leaders YouTube, Netflix, and a combined entry from ESPN parent company Disney setting the pace, respectively. Broadcast television followed with 21.4%, cable TV generated 20.2%, and other uses such as DVD playback, gaming, and audio streaming combined for the final 10.9%.
The January edition of The Gauge, to be released next month, is expected to amplify the trends even more, as the NFL has already hit another league streaming record. Amazon’s coverage of a Packers-Bears wild-card game on Jan. 10 averaged 31.6 million viewers, smashing the prior league mark just set on Christmas by Netflix.
