Netflix and Amazon jingled all the way to some big audiences on Christmas Day, thanks to the NFL.
The most-watched game of the holiday proved to be the mid-afternoon Lions-Vikings match up on Netflix, which secured 27.5M live + same-day U.S. viewers according to Nielsen Big Data + Panel. This includes out-of-home viewing, CBS local market viewing, NFL+, and mobile and web viewing across Netflix.
That’s pretty much on par with, and in fact just slightly higher than, the streamer’s Ravens-Texans telecast last year. Nielsen also says that U.S. viewership for this year’s game peaked at just over 30M viewers.
Globally, Netflix says that based on first party data, the Lions-Vikings garnered an average minute audience of 30.5M in Live + 1.
There was no Beyoncé Bowl this year, but there was Snoop’s Holiday Halftime Party. Snoop Dogg’s performance averaged 29M viewers in the U.S., per Nielsen.
Earlier in the day, the Cowboys-Commanders game averaged 19.9M U.S. viewers, Nielsen says. Netflix adds that the L+1 global average minute audience for this game came in around 22.4M. This was a bit of a slower start to the day than last year, when more than 25M U.S. viewers tuned in for Chiefs-Steelers to kick things off.
While there were only two games last year, both hosted by Netflix, the NFL threw a third game in at primetime this year, which went to Prime Video‘s .
Amazon got the Chiefs this year, although this time around the team suffered a disappointing loss to the Denver Broncos that was watched by 21.06M U.S. viewers, according to Nielsen.
That puts it in second place among the Christmas Day matchups, but it is actually the most-watched Thursday Night Football regular season game ever for Prime Video, eclipsing the previous record setter, Cowboys-Lions game earlier in the month, by about 2M viewers.
Broncos-Chiefs also attracted a record high peak audience for TNF on Prime ever with 22.9M viewers at the top of the 9 p.m. ET hour.
As with last year, all three of these matchups had U.S. audiences that were a tad lower than the usual broadcast viewership that the NFL has attracted in years past on Christmas Day. In 2023, a Chiefs-Raiders game became the most-watched Christmas Day regular-season game ever with 29.2M viewers. The Eagles-Giants also took home 29M that day, while the 49ers-Ravens managed 27.1M.
The difference maker tends to be Netflix’s global audience, which helps the streamer tack on a few million additional viewers. While that helped bridge the gap for Lions-Vikings, boosting it just over these totals, it didn’t do much for Cowboys-Commanders, where U.S. viewership was down quote significantly.
For Netflix, this was year two of a three-year deal with the NFL to broadcast NFL football games on Christmas Day. Under the deal, the streamer gets at least one game each year. Christmas falls on a Friday rather than a Thursday in 2026, so Prime Video is unlikely to host again. However, whether that means a game will default back to broadcast or find a home on another streamer remains to be seen.
