The Big Lead

Over 17 million people went to YouTube for Chiefs-Chargers in Brazil

The NFL drew a healthy audience, even if it was less then last year's Christmas games on Netflix

By Miguel Villafuerte

View inside the stadium before a game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers at Corinthians Arena.
View inside the stadium before a game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers at Corinthians Arena. / Jean Carniel/Reuters via Imagn Images
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17.3 million people around the world tuned in to watch the Los Angeles Chargers defeat the Kansas City Chiefs in Sao Paulo, Brazil on Friday night as per Jennifer Maas of Variety.com.

All in all, that’s some pretty good numbers for the South American leg of the NFL’s international games. However, the league may have still fallen short of producing the viewership figures they were hoping for given that it didn’t cost a single cent to watch the live stream of the game on YouTube.

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The international streaming audience of 17.3 million, with 16.2 million viewers coming from the US, were below the streaming records achieved on Christmas Day a year ago albeit not every country and region in the world had access to the YouTube broadcast.

Those Christmas Day games were streamed on Netflix, a service you need to pay money for unlike YouTube, and drew in US audiences of 24.1 million for the Chiefs’ win over the Steelers and 24.3 million for the Ravens blowout of the Texans.

Either way, the figures for this season’s Brazil game were still higher than the numbers generated from last year’s South American showdown between the Eagles and Packers, when 14.2 million streamed the matchup on Peacock.

It probably shouldn’t be too surprising that more people watched games held on Christmas than an overseas Friday night game in early September.

From the NFL’s perspective, they will likely do their due diligence to see what else could be done better to attract even more viewers from the first ever game shown for free on the YouTube platform.

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