According to preliminary Nielsen numbers, which don’t include international viewers, this Christmas Day broke NFL all-time streaming records. Once the international viewership numbers come in, the record margin will be even higher.
According to Axios: “Once international figures and additional U.S. data is calculated, the league expects both games will have averaged around 30 million viewers each.”
The second Christmas Day game, in which the Baltimore Ravens trounced the Houston Texans 31-2 (which was just the third game in NFL history with this final score, and the first to have a 17-2 halftime score) drew an average minute audience of 24.3 million.
U.S. viewership peaked during Beyonce’s halftime performance, which drew 27 million. The Ravens rout in H-town outperformed the early Christmas Day game, which saw Baltimore’s arch-rivals, the Pittsburgh Steelers, fall 29-10 to the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs.
Steelers-Chiefs drew an average of 24.1 million viewers.
The Ravens win was also the most-watched Christmas Day game on record among a demographic strongly coveted by many marketers: 18-34 year-olds.
According to the league, the game drew a record 5.1 million U.S. viewers within this key demo, a new all-time high. It is worth noting that these records are based on Nielsen numbers, which only date back to 2001.
