In a first, an NFL postseason wild card game between the Miami Dolphins and defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs was exclusively streamed on NBCU’s Peacock. The game was accessed via Peacock Premium at $5.99 monthly to subscribe to its ad supported tier. According to Nielsen, the primetime game generated an average audience of 23.0 million viewers, making it the most streamed event to date. The average audience peaked at 24.6 million during second quarter (9:15-9:30 p.m. ET). Overall, the game had reached 27.6 million viewers.

Furthermore, NBCU said the wild card game also set another record with Peacock consuming 30% of all internet traffic. Also, the game had at one point had 16.3 million concurrent devices using Peacock, the highest total ever for the streamer. The game was also televised on NBC affiliated stations in the home markets of Kansas City and Miami as well as streamed on NFL+. Most importantly, NBCU reported a minimal number of technical glitches during the live stream.

What, if any, subscriber growth Peacock will receive from streaming the game, Puck however, reported, prior to kick-off, that Google GOOG Trends had Peacock ranked first on the App Store. Data from Taboola found following Saturday night's wild card game online interest in Peacock is up 178%.

NFL Ratings

The streaming record came on the heels of yet another strong regular season ratings performance for the NFL. In calendar year 2023, NFL regular season and playoff games accounted for 93% of the most watched TV programs. The average audience for all regular season games in 2023 on television and digital outlets was 17.9 million, a year-over-year increase of 7%. Moreover, the viewership was the highest since 2015 and, going back to 1995, tied for second best with the 2010 season. The NFL also reported year-over-year ratings growth across every major television window.

Last year, the six games played on wild card weekend across the four television networks and their digital partners averaged 28.8 million viewers. By comparison, last season’s Saturday night wild card game (Los Angeles Chargers vs. Jacksonville Jaguars) averaged 20.6 million linear TV viewers (on NBC) and 1.2 million streaming viewers (primarily on Peacock). Hence, this year, the audience for the corresponding game on Peacock was 6% higher.

Prior to the game on Peacock, NBC had televised the first wild card game of the year (Houston Texans vs. Cleveland Browns) which averaged 29 million viewers. It was the most watched Saturday wild card game on NBC in a decade. Throughout the game, NBC aired promos instructing viewers how to subscribe to Peacock.

This will be the first of many live streamed NFL postseason games. The Associated Press reports, with the NFL’s new 11-year media contract which started with the 2023 season, NBC, CBS, ABC/ESPN and Fox all get to televise one of the six wild card games played. With the remaining two games, one is rotated between NBC, CBS and Fox each year. The networks can bid on carrying the sixth wild card game. The NFL has indicated a willingness for that game to be live streamed. Last May, NBCU won the rights for the sixth wild card game paying a reported $110 million. With the success of Peacock, next season NBCU will be competing with the likes of Prime Video, Paramount+ and ESPN+, YouTube to stream a wild card.

NFL Streaming

Exclusively streaming NFL games during the regular season is no longer a phenomenon. Amazon’s AMZN Prime Video has been streaming Thursday Night Football for the past two seasons. In 2023, the average audience for TNF was 11.86 million viewers, a year-over-year increase of 24%. Amazon said ten of the 16 games averaged 10+ million viewers and every TNF game delivered a higher audience than any broadcast or cable program on that evening. On November 30, the Dallas Cowboys-Seattle Seahawks game averaged 15.3 million viewers, the most streamed NFL game prior to the wild card matchup on Peacock. Amazon pays the NFL $1 billion per annum to live stream Thursday Night Football.

In addition, Amazon paid the NFL a reported $100 million to live stream the league’s first Black Friday game (Green Bay Packers vs. New York Jets). While the game averaged 9.6 million viewers, below Thursday Night Football’s audience, the ecommerce giant is hoping to stream another Black Friday game next season.

There are other examples of exclusively streamed NFL regular season games. On December 23, Peacock live streamed a regular season matchup between the Los Angeles Chargers and Buffalo Bills. The game generated an average audience of 7.3 viewers peaking at 8.4 million viewers. (Including viewing from the two home markets.) Similar to the wild card matchup, Peacock ran a commercial free fourth quarter.

Also, over the past two seasons, ESPN+ has exclusively live streamed an early morning NFL game from London. Before the streaming wars began, Yahoo, in what was described as a test live, streamed an NFL game (Buffalo Bills vs. Jacksonville Jaguars) from London in October 2015. Yahoo had paid $10 million for the rights.

After 29 seasons, in 2023, Google’s YouTube replaced DirecTV as the exclusive home of NFL Sunday Ticket. The annual subscription cost was $450 million. Midseason, YouTube cut the subscription cost in half to $224. Although YouTube has not made public any subscriber data, according to Antenna and reported by Bloomberg, Sunday Ticket has 1.3 million streaming subscribers.

In addition, Business Insider says the subscriber counts for YouTube TV, a vMVPD, had increased by 48% from October 2022 to October 2023. YouTube TV subscribers get a $100 discount for subscribing to Season Ticket. YouTube pays the NFL over $2 billion a year to stream Sunday Ticket in a deal that expires in 2029.

A primary reason for the NFL promoting streaming platforms is its younger and more affluent audience which are a popular target for many advertisers. In its second season, Amazon reported the median age for the Thursday Football Night audience was 48.5, notably younger than the NFL viewer on linear television at 55.4. Also, the median age for viewers watching prime time broadcast television in the Fall of 2023 was 62.4. The median household income for TNF was $101,000 compared to $87,300 for the NFL audience on linear television.

Peacock

NBCU’s Peacock was launched in July 2020. The streaming service has 30 million subscribers, significantly smaller than rivals Amazon Prime Video (150 million U.S. subscribers) and Netflix NFLX (77 million U.S. subscribers). Over the past year however, Peacock’s subscriber count has grown by ten million. Peacock is unavailable outside the United States.

With NBCU closing down its vertical sports cable network NBCSN on the last day of 2021, Peacock has been active in streaming premium live sporting events. These include the Olympics, the English Premier League and Big Ten football among others. The New York Times NYT found, during one weekend in September, Peacock had live streamed 51 different sporting events including seven simultaneously.

Besides live sports, Peacock streams content from NBCU’s linear television channels and programming library including Vanderpump Rules and Parks & Rec among numerous others. There is also original content such as a new series based on Seth McFarlane’s Ted (which has become Peacock’s most streamed original program since its debut on January 11). There is also an extensive film library, on February 16 Oscar favorite and Universal picture Oppenheimer, will become available on Peacock.

Besides their ad supported tier at $5.99 monthly, Peacock’s Premium Plus, an ad free package costs $11.99 per month. According to eMarketer, 77.8% of Peacock subscribers opt for the ad supported tier higher than any other major streaming provider. Nielsen’s monthly Gauge Report for December found Peacock had garnered an audience share of 1.3%, below rival streamers YouTube, Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+ but slightly higher than Max, Paramount+ and Apple+.

NFL Fans And Streaming

A survey from Front Office Sports and Harris Poll conducted prior to the Wild Card found most NFL fans were open to paying to watch a postseason game.

· 61% of NFL fans said they would likely pay a subscription to a streaming service to watch an NFL playoff game. While 41% of U.S. adults said they would likely pay a subscription to a streaming service to watch an NFL playoff game.

· 57% of NFL fans said they would be likely to pay a one-time fee to watch an NFL playoff game. While 42% of U.S. adults said they would be likely to pay a one-time fee to watch an NFL playoff game.

· Of those NFL fans willing to pay a per-game price, more than half (53%) would pay $10 or more and 17% would pay $20 or more.

Nonetheless, many NFL fans were not happy and voiced their displeasure. For example, congressman Pat Ryan (D-NY) wrote, “It’s a disgrace. Fans already face exorbitant prices to watch every game during the regular season; they don’t deserve to be squeezed even further by greedy corporations. This bait-and-switch is particularly egregious for consumers who already pay for NBC as part of their cable package. … Congress granted the NFL an antitrust exemption in its broadcast deals with the expectation that you wouldn’t use it to screw over fans. That was clearly a mistake.”

By the way, the wild card game was won by Kansas City by a score of 27-6. The game, in Kansas City, was played under difficult conditions for both players and the 71,000 spectators (including Taylor Swift). At kick-off the air temperature was -4 with a wind chill of-27. For the next round of playoffs Kansas City will be played in Buffalo.