Beyoncé provided more excitement than either match. Netflix’s NFL debut On Christmas.
She appeared at halftime riding a white horse. 32nd Grammy Award Winner The singer rocked the crowd in her hometown of Houston with a 13-minute performance on Wednesday.
She surprised fans by bringing out Shaboozey to perform ‘Sweet Honey Buckiin”, and Post Malone joined her for ‘Levii’s Jeans.’
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The action on the field did not live up to expectations as the NFL featured four of the top five teams in the AFC.
Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce exposed the flaws in Pittsburgh’s defense during Kansas City’s 29-10 loss in Game 1.
The broadcast itself went well, making it Netflix’s second most popular live title to date, according to NFL Media.
Lamar Jackson and the Ravens led CJ Stroud and the Texans 17-2 at halftime before Beyoncé stole the show. Baltimore won 31-2 with Jackson resting most of the fourth quarter.
Mariah Carey opened the football doubleheader with a taped performance of “All I Want for Christmas is You” and the Chiefs, the two-time defending Super Bowl champions, defeated the Steelers. They took the #1 seed in the AFC.
After Netflix experienced a minor glitch at the start of the pre-game show, there were no signs of serious streaming issues during the game. The broadcast began with about 10 seconds of silence because studio host Kay Adams’ microphone did not turn on.
Beyoncé’s live performance at NRG Stadium was supposed to be the streaming giant’s biggest test yet, and it seemed to go off without a hitch.
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Mahomes threw for 320 yards and three touchdowns and Kelce had eight catches for 84 yards and a score as the Chiefs (15-1) earned a first-round bye and home-field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs. The Steelers (10-6) have lost three straight and may have to settle for a wild card spot.
Jackson threw two touchdown passes and ran for a score and Derrick Henry rushed for 147 yards and one TD to help the Ravens (11-5) take first place in the AFC North, one game ahead of Pittsburgh.
Netflix signed a three-year deal in May to broadcast Christmas games. The NFL is expected to deliver one of the streaming service’s biggest days since the site launched in 1998.
282.3 million Netflix subscribers in more than 190 countries were able to stream the game, marking the first time an NFL game was distributed globally by a single outlet. Netflix made the game available in five languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German.
netflix there was a problem streaming Mike Tyson-Jake Paul Fight November 14th. The match peaked at 65 million concurrent streams, including 38 million concurrent streams in the United States. According to the Down Detector website, nearly 85,000 viewers logged outages or streaming issues before and during the fight.
According to NFL Media, viewers in all 50 states tuned in within minutes of the pregame show airing live, and viewers in nearly 200 countries tuned in for the first game. Before Ravens-Texans kicked off, Netflix reported that it had surpassed its highest number of concurrent viewers on Christmas Day in the past four years.
The NFL played its first game on Wednesday since the Steelers and Ravens were forced to play on Dec. 2, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The only time the league has played on a Wednesday since 1948 was in 2012 when the Giants and Cowboys met in the season opener.
The NFL held its first games on Christmas Day 1971 with two divisional playoff games. The league avoided games on December 25 from 1972 to 1988, and when Christmas Day fell on a Sunday, the entire schedule of games were moved to Saturdays. Since 1989, 30 games have been played on Christmas Day, with never more than three games on the day. But the NFL struggled to schedule two games on Wednesday to accommodate its $150 million deal with Netflix.
This isn’t the first time an NFL game has been aired exclusively on a streaming service. The league’s Thursday night games are in their third season on Amazon Prime Video. Peacock streamed the Packers-Eagles game from Sao Paulo, Brazil in Week 1, and Prime Video will stream the wild card game. Additionally, the ‘Sunday Ticket’ package was moved to YouTube TV last year.
The largest audience for a streaming-only NFL game was 23 million on Peacock for last season’s AFC Wild Card game between the Miami Dolphins and Chiefs.
