The first global free-to-view live stream of a regular-season American football NFL game on Sunday attracted more than 15.2m unique viewers.
The Buffalo Bills v Jacksonville Jaguars game at London’s Wembley Stadium on Sunday was streamed live on internet company Yahoo and online blogging website Tumblr.
More than 460m minutes of the game were streamed, with 33 per cent of the streams coming from outside the US. Viewers from a total of 185 countries watched the action. The game attracted an average audience of 2.36m viewers.
“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,” said Hans Schroeder, senior vice-president of media strategy, business development and sales for the NFL. “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 US and by distributing it digitally were able to attract a global audience of over 15m viewers.”