A National Football League (NFL) Wild Card playoff game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins drew nearly 23 million viewers to Comcast’s streaming service Peacock and other digital platforms, the company said in a statement this week.
The American Football Conference (AFC) Wild Card game was exclusive to Comcast’s streaming service throughout much of the country, though viewers in Kansas City and Miami were able to watch the game on their local NBC affiliates because of in-market broadcast rules imposed by the NFL.
Overall, the game drew 27.6 million total viewers across Peacock, local TV and the streaming service NFL Plus, the latter of which offers live access to NFL games on mobile devices. The figures were based on preliminary Nielsen ratings released on Sunday.
Peacock itself saw more than 16 million concurrent streams across supported devices during the game, suggesting that figure more-accurately represented the number of people who streamed the game on Peacock compared to those who watched through other means.
The game was the most-streamed live event in U.S. history, according to NBC Sports, though it wasn’t immediately clear how the organization substantiated that information.
While the figure was a big win for Peacock and NBC Sports, it paled in comparison to the most-streamed live sporting event on a global scale. That honor goes to the cricket, with the 2023 World Cup pulling in 59 million peak viewers to the Walt Disney Company’s Disney Plus with Hotstar service.
