NFL Sets Streaming Record on Christmas

Even with a lesser lineup of games for Christmas, the National Football League made history on the holiday.

Netflix said Wednesday that it averaged 27.5 million U.S. viewers for its late-afternoon game between the Lions and Vikings, breaking an NFL streaming record of 24 million it previously set on Christmas 2024. 

An earlier Christmas Day matchup between the Cowboys and Commanders on Netflix, meanwhile, averaged 19.9 million, a figure more in keeping with the diminished expectations for the holiday that featured five non-playoff teams among the six competing franchises.

The Detroit-Minnesota game, however, peaked at more than 30 million U.S. viewers, further showing the league’s unrivaled drawing power, even for a game with minimal competitive implications. Helping burnish the overall viewership was a halftime show starring hip-hop icon Snoop Dogg, and the presentation, Snoop’s Holiday Halftime Party, averaged 29 million U.S. viewers.

Globally, the Cowboys-Commanders game averaged 22.4 million viewers, while the Lions-Vikings game averaged 30.5 million. 

Amazon Sets Its Own Record

A primetime Christmas matchup between the Broncos and Chiefs averaged 21.06 million viewers on Amazon, setting a regular-season record for the NFL on that platform.

The figure beats a figure of 19.4 million set earlier this month for a Cowboys-Lions game on Thursday Night Football. It’s also the third time this season that Amazon has set a record for its NFL viewership in the regular season. Amazon established the latest mark even with the worst Chiefs team in more than a decade and the absence of star quarterback Patrick Mahomes due to a season-ending injury.

Both Netflix and Amazon used Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel measurement process, now the industry’s established standard, as opposed to YouTube’s use of a non-accredited methodology for a September game, generating widespread controversy. 

Amazon will have a wild-card playoff game next weekend, and it will look to beat the NFL streaming record that Netflix just set. A Steelers-Ravens game from last year’s opening round averaged 22.1 million on Amazon, and it remains the company’s biggest NFL audience to date.

Beating the NBA

After another rather spirited back-and-forth between the NFL and the NBA—and their respective supporters—about who should have supremacy on Christmas, the average football viewership of 22.9 million for the tripleheader more than quadrupled the NBA’s average of 5.5 million on Disney-owned platforms for a generally strong five-game set.

Compared against itself, though, the NBA figures showed marked growth, from both a year ago and historically. The average was up 4% from 2024’s average, and the overall reach of 47.2 million unique viewers was up 45% from last year and represented the most-watched Christmas for the league in 15 years, excluding a season-opening set of holiday games in 2011. 

The second NBA game of the day, the Spurs against the defending champion Thunder, led Christmas viewership with an average of 6.7 million. That beat the draws for games involving frequent Christmas participants such as the Lakers, Warriors, and Knicks. 

The NFL’s comparable Christmas reach figure, according to industry sources, was 76 million.