For the first time in history, an NFL game was live streamed for public viewership courtesy of Yahoo. Kevin Patra of NFL Media reported that tilt between the Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars at Wembley Stadium in London drew 15.2 million unique views and a total of 33.6 million views.
Adam Cahan, who is Yahoo’s SVP of Product and Engineering, released this statement regarding the joint venture with the NFL.
“It’s been a great opportunity to partner with the NFL and deliver a truly exceptional global live streaming experience for our users. We’re seeing a dramatic shift in the industry as audiences’ primary video watching moves away from TV. We were thrilled to join the NFL in setting a new standard for sports programming for our users and advertisers.”
According to the report, 33 percent of the viewer streams came from 185 countries throughout the world.
NFL employee shared this regarding the partnership:
“We’re thrilled with the results of our initial step distributing an NFL game to a worldwide audience and with the work of our partner, Yahoo. We are incredibly excited by the fact that we took a game that would have been viewed by a relatively limited television audience in the United States and by distributing it digitally were able to attract a global audience of over 15 million viewers.”
According to Peter King of MMQB, the 15.2 million unique viewers falls between the 17.6 million who watch Thursday Night Football and 13.5 million who view the Monday Night Football games.
With such a successful turnout for the first live stream, we should expect more will be in the NFL’s future.