Peacock, the over-the-top streaming service owned by media giant NBCUniversal, recorded a significant record during its exclusive broadcast of the Philadelphia Eagles’ 34-29 victory over the Green Bay Packers from American football's NFL.
The NFL’s first-ever game in Brazil became the second-most-viewed live event on Peacock, behind only the record-setting Peacock exclusive AFC Wild Card match between the Miami Dolphins and the Kansas City Chiefs in January, which averaged 23 million viewers.
The Packers-Eagles game had an average total audience delivery of 14.2 million viewers, nearly doubling Peacock’s previous NFL-exclusive regular season game, which was the 7.3 million viewers for the Buffalo Bills versus the Los Angeles Chargers match on December 23 last year.
The audience for the Brazil clash peaked at 15.3 million viewers during a high-scoring second quarter.
In March the NFL had announced two games through its 2024 season to be broadcast exclusively on streaming services domestically in the US.
The first of these two exclusive streaming games was Sao Paolo, Brazil, fixture, which the Eagles won 34-29.
Featuring the Philadelphia Eagles as the designated home team, the game was the first NFL fixture ever staged in Brazil but also the first to be held on the Friday night of the season’s opening weekend since 1970.
The second game to be added to the slate of streaming-only broadcasts is an as-yet undecided NFL playoff WildCard round game which will be broadcast on the Prime Video service owned by Amazon.
Amazon is currently the exclusive streaming partner of the NFL’s Thursday Night Football slate of games, while the 2023 season saw a Wild Card round game broadcast exclusively on streaming for the first time on Peacock.
The Peacock livestream exclusive Wild Card game, which took place in January, drew numbers equivalent to a major TV broadcast and as such was the most live-streamed game in NFL history. The return of a streaming-only game to the 2024 season’s Wild Card round is doubtless aimed at continuing this strong trend.
Meanwhile, the Kansas City Chiefs’ 27-20 victory over the Baltimore Ravens’ broadcast on NBC and Peacock has become the most-watched NFL Kickoff game of all time, averaging 28.9 million viewers.
The audience peaked at 33 million viewers in the second quarter.
The Ravens-Chiefs broadcast is also the second most simulstreamed NBC NFL match ever, beating three season-ending NBC Super Bowls, only trailing Super Bowl LVI.
The average minute audience (AMA) for the live stream on Peacock, NBC Sports digital platforms, and NFL digital platforms, was 4.6 million.
The Ravens-Chiefs broadcast also surpassed viewership for last year’s NFL Kickoff Game by 5%, with the Lions-Chiefs match having 27.5 million viewers. The AMA also saw an increase of 65% from last year’s Kickoff Game, which was 2.8 million.
The game was a rematch of last season’s AFC Championship Game, headlined by star quarterbacks Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson.
