N.F.L. Christmas Games on Netflix Break Streaming Records, With Beyoncé’s Help

U.S.|N.F.L. Christmas Games on Netflix Break Streaming Records, With Beyoncé’s Help

The Kansas City Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens notched big Christmas Day victories on their way to the playoffs, and the Netflix streams of those games reaped record ratings.

An even bigger winner was Beyoncé.

The two games, the Chiefs versus the Pittsburgh Steelers followed by the Ravens against the Houston Texans, each had an average audience of just over 24 million viewers, which made them the most streamed N.F.L. games in history, according to Nielsen data provided by Netflix on Thursday.

But Beyoncé’s halftime performance during the Ravens-Texans game did even better, according to Nielsen, a ratings service. She drew an audience of 27 million. The hashtag #BeyonceBowl ranked above even #Christmas on X, according to Netflix.

The game was streamed, rather than broadcast, as part of a three-season deal between the league and Netflix.

The broadcast records still stand above Netflix’s streaming numbers. Earlier this year, 34.2 million viewers on average tuned in to watch three Thanksgiving Day games — a record for the holiday. But the Christmas Day streaming figure is expected to increase when the global viewership figures are released next week.

Bela Bajaria, the chief content officer for Netflix, called it a “record-breaking day” in a statement.

Netflix is best known for its original and licensed television shows. But in March, the company announced the three-season N.F.L. deal, which included broadcasting two Christmas Day games to its 283 million global subscribers this year. The games were the streaming service’s latest foray into live sports, following the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul boxing fight last month that Netflix said peaked at 65 million streams.

The Christmas Day N.F.L. games featured two marquee matchups between four playoff opponents from the same conference and a recorded performance by Mariah Carey, the Queen of Christmas. But some viewers came just for the Beyoncé concert. The viewership for the Ravens-Texans game peaked at 27 million viewers during Queen Bey’s halftime show, Netflix said.

Some viewers said on social media that they were nervous about whether Netflix would be able to handle the millions of viewers that were expected to stream the two N.F.L. games. The Tyson-Paul fight in November was plagued by buffering problems and fuzzy picture quality.

On Christmas Eve, Beyoncé poked fun at that less-than-perfect boxing stream in a teaser video that stalled out in the middle. But aside from some audio trouble at the beginning of the first game, the Christmas Day stream was a relatively flawless experience.

Then again, it might not have felt that flawless for Steelers and Texans fans, whose teams got a holiday walloping.