By Rob Maaddi
The Associated Press
Beyoncé provided more excitement than either of the two games played during Netflix’s NFL debut on Christmas Day 2024.
Riding into her halftime appearance on a white horse, the 32-time Grammy winner rocked her hometown Houston crowd with a nearly 13-minute performance on Dec. 25.
She surprised fans by bringing out Shaboozey to perform “Sweet Honey Buckiin” and Post Malone joined her for “Levii’s Jeans.”
The action on the field didn’t live up to expectations as the NFL showcased four of the AFC’s top five teams.
Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce exposed a glitch in Pittsburgh’s defense during Kansas City’s 29-10 rout in the first game.
The broadcast itself went off just fine, quickly becoming the second-most popular live title on Netflix to date, according to NFL Media.
Lamar Jackson and the Ravens led C.J. Stroud and the Texans 17-2 at halftime before Beyoncé stole the show. Baltimore finished off the 31-2 victory 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 then the two-time defending Super Bowl champion Chiefs trounced the Steelers to clinch the No. 1 seed in the AFC.
There were no signs of any major streaming issues during the game after Netflix experienced minor blunders at the start of the pregame show. The broadcast opened with roughly 10 seconds of silence because it appeared studio host Kay Adams’ microphone wasn’t turned on.
Beyoncé’s live performance at NRG Stadium was supposed to be the biggest test for the streaming giant and it seemed to go off without a hitch.
Mahomes threw for 320 yards and three touchdowns and Kelce had eight catches for 84 yards and one 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 games and may have to settle for a wild-card spot.
Jackson tossed two touchdown passes and ran for a score and Derrick Henry had 147 yards rushing and one TD to help the Ravens (11-5) move into first place in the AFC North, one game ahead of Pittsburgh.
Netflix agreed to a three-year contract in May 2024 to broadcast Christmas Day games. The NFL is expected to give the streaming service one of its biggest days since the site launched in 1998.
Netflix’s 282.3 million subscribers in more than 190 countries could stream the games, marking the first time one outlet distributed an NFL game globally. Netflix had the games available in five languages — English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German.
Netflix had problems streaming the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul fight on Nov. 14. The bout peaked at 65 million concurrent streams, including 38 million concurrent streams in the United States. According to the website Down Detector, nearly 85,000 viewers logged problems with outages or streaming leading up to and during the fight.
There were fewer complaints on Dec. 25.
According to NFL Media, viewers in all 50 states tuned in within minutes of the pregame show going live and viewers from nearly 200 countries watched the first game. Before the Ravens-Texans kicked off, Netflix reported that it eclipsed its peak concurrent viewers of any Christmas in the past four years.
The NFL was playing its first games on a Wednesday since the Steelers and Ravens were forced to play on Dec. 2, 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The only other time the league played on a Wednesday since 1948 was in 2012 when the Giants and Cowboys met in the season opener.
Commercials
Netflix promoted its own programming in addition to the usual slew of advertisements. The first teaser trailer for “Happy Gilmore 2” was released before kickoff. Adam Sandler is back as Happy Gilmore for the sports comedy that hits the streaming service in 2025. Travis Kelce also was featured in a trailer filled with cameos by celebrities, including Bad Bunny and Kid Cudi.
New Christmas tradition
The NFL played its first games on Christmas Day in 1971 with a pair of divisional playoff games. The league avoided playing on Wednesday from 1972-88 and shifted its full slate of games to Saturday if Christmas fell on a Sunday. Since 1989, there have been 30 games on Christmas, never more than three on that day. But the NFL went out of its way to schedule two games on Dec. 25 to accommodate its $150 million deal with Netflix.
Broadcasting teams
J.J. Watt, a three-time AP Defensive Player of the Year and brother of Steelers four-time All-Pro edge rusher T.J. Watt, and former NFL wide receiver Nate Burleson shared analyst duties for the Chiefs-Steelers game, with Ian Eagle on play-by-play.
“I’m extremely proud of him and also slightly concerned he’s getting close to a lot of my records,” J.J. Watt said of his younger brother at the start of the broadcast.
Noah Eagle, Ian’s son, was on play-by-play for the Ravens-Texans game, with former NFL tight end Greg Olsen in the analyst seat.
Not a first
This wasn’t the first time NFL games aired exclusively on a streaming service. The league’s Thursday night games are in their third season on Amazon Prime Video and Peacock streamed the Packers-Eagles game in São Paulo, Brazil, in Week 1. The “Sunday Ticket” package also moved to YouTube TV last year.
The largest audience for a streamed-exclusive NFL game was 23 million, viewed on Peacock, for last season’s AFC wild-card game between the Miami Dolphins and the Chiefs.
