Yahoo logged 15.2 million unique viewers and 33.6 million streams for Sunday’s Bills-Jaguars game in London, a number that NFL execs believe will make it the most streamed sporting event in U.S. history. The league says more than 460 million total minutes of video were consumed. The 33.6 million streams also are well above the 3.5 million streams that Yahoo promised advertisers it would deliver. The NFL says these numbers would be a top 10 show in the U.S., averaging less than “Thursday Night Football” and more than “MNF.” The league expects viewer numbers to increase when they add in over-the-air TV numbers in Buffalo, Jacksonville and London, plus digital numbers from China.
NFL Senior VP/Media Strategy, Business Development & Sales Hans Schroeder said that an individual stream was counted if viewers stayed and watched for more than three seconds. In order to increase the number of streams, the game was on autoplay to anyone visiting the Yahoo.com home page. As much as 33% of the audience (more than 5 million viewers) came from 180 international markets. While acknowledging that some people experienced glitches “on the edges,” Schroeder was enthused about how well the game performed online.
