15.2 Million Viewers Watch Yahoo’s First NFL Global Live Stream

At least 15.2 million viewers tuned in for Sunday’s first ever live-streaming NFL broadcast, Yahoo reported this morning. Perhaps more significantly, Yahoo reported extremely low buffering rates and anecdotal accounts indicated no major technical problems with the global live-stream.

“It’s been a great opportunity to partner with the NFL and deliver a truly exceptional global live streaming experience for our users,” Adam Cahan, Yahoo’s streaming chief said in a statement. “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.”

Yahoo did not report the number of simultaneous live streams for the Jacksonville Jaguars-Buffalo Bills game — the metric that would most closely approximate traditional TV viewership — but CNN Money estimated that that it was likely 2 million simultaneous streams. That would make Sunday’s game the most watched live-stream in history — significantly more than the last season’s Super Bowl (1.3 million simultaneous streams) and CNN’s recent presidential debate (1 million).

Yahoo reported 15.2 million unique viewers for the game, with 33 percent of those coming outside the United States. That works out to 10.2 million million U.S. viewers. Although a staggering number for a live stream, 2 million simultaneous streams with only two-thirds of those coming in the United States would be a fraction of the 9.9 million people that watched the Jets-Dolphins game played in London and televised by CBS earlier this season.

Two reporters who watched the live stream wrote that they had positive experiences with it. Mike Snider of USA Today reported that his viewing “was smooth and detailed on the computer, tablet and smartphone” and that “the feed on a big-screen TV via the NFL app on Xbox Live, while it was watchable and never froze or went black, was not as smooth and had a perceptible stutter.” Forbes contributor Jerry Barca wrote that, for him, that “picture quality was nearly flawless throughout the game with Apple TV.”

Yahoo, which paid the NFL a reported $17 million to live-stream the game, did not announce any financial figures for ad sales in the release or indicate whether it made money on the venture. Even if the game itself wasn’t profitable, Yahoo appears to have demonstrated to the NFL, to advertisers, and to viewers that it has the technical prowess to live-stream such a high-stakes, high-profile event.

“One of the things we’re trying to demonstrate is our ability to scale a global audience,” Cahan told Decider in an interview last week. “For a partner like the NFL, it’s important for us to be able to show that we can rival the reach of TV or other kinds of internet delivery.”

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Scott Porch writes about the streaming-media industry for Decider. He is also a contributing writer for Biographile and The Daily Beast. You can follow him on Twitter @ScottPorch.

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