Beyoncé brought more excitement to Netflix’s NFL debut on Christmas Day than either game. The 32-time Grammy winner rode a white horse to her halftime performance and wowed her hometown Houston crowd with a nearly 13-minute performance on Wednesday.

Who performed with Beyoncé?

She surprised her fans by bringing Shaboozey to perform “Sweet Honey Buckiin” and Post Malone joined her on “Levii’s Jeans.” The action on the field was not what was expected as the NFL featured four of the AFC’s top five teams. Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce exposed a flaw in Pittsburgh’s defense during Kansas City’s 29-10 loss in Game 1. The transfer itself went flawlessly.

Beyoncé brought more excitement to Netflix’s NFL debut on Christmas Day than either game.

The 32-time Grammy winner rode a white horse to her halftime performance and wowed her hometown Houston crowd with a nearly 13-minute performance on Wednesday.

She surprised her fans by bringing Shaboozey to perform “Sweet Honey Buckiin” and Post Malone joined her on “Levii’s Jeans.”

The action on the field was not what was expected as the NFL featured four of the AFC’s top five teams.

Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce exposed a flaw in Pittsburgh’s defense during Kansas City’s 29-10 loss in Game 1.

The broadcast itself went extremely well and quickly became the second most popular live title on Netflix to date, according to NFL Media.

Lamar Jackson and the Ravens led CJ Stroud and the Texans 17-2 at halftime before Beyoncé stole the show. Baltimore closed out the 31-2 victory by resting Jackson for most of the fourth quarter.

Mariah Carey opened the football doubleheader with a taped performance of “All I Want for Christmas is You,” and then the two-time defending Super Bowl champion Chiefs defeated the Steelers to secure the No. 1 seed in the AFC.

There were no signs of major streaming issues during the game after Netflix made minor errors early in the pregame show. The broadcast began with about 10 seconds of silence as it appeared studio host Kay Adams’ microphone was not turned on.

Beyoncé’s live performance at NRG Stadium was supposed to be the biggest test for the streaming giant and seemed to go off without a hitch.

Mahomes threw for 320 yards and three touchdowns and Kelce had eight catches for 84 yards and a score, helping the Chiefs (15-1) earn a first-round bye and home-field advantage in the AFC playoffs. The Steelers (10-6) have lost three straight games and may have to settle for a wild-card spot.

Jackson threw two touchdown passes and ran for a score, and Derrick Henry had 147 yards rushing and a touchdown to help the Ravens (11-5) move into first place in the AFC North, one game ahead of Pittsburgh.

Netflix agreed to a three-year deal to broadcast Christmas games in May. The NFL is expected to give the streaming service one of its biggest days since the site launched in 1998.

Netflix’s 282.3 million subscribers in more than 190 countries were able to stream the games, marking the first time a broadcaster had distributed an NFL game worldwide. Netflix offered the games in five languages ​​– English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German.

Netflix had problems streaming the fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul on November 14th. The fight peaked at 65 million concurrent streams, including 38 million concurrent streams in the United States. According to the website Down Detector, nearly 85,000 viewers reported issues with outages or streaming leading up to and during the fight.

There were fewer complaints on Wednesday.

According to NFL Media, viewers in all 50 states tuned in within minutes of the pregame show going live, and viewers from nearly 200 countries watched the first game. Before the Ravens-Texans kicked off, Netflix reported that the series had surpassed the highest number of concurrent viewers on Christmas in the last four years.

The NFL played its first games on a Wednesday since the Steelers and Ravens were forced to play on December 2, 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The only time the league played on a Wednesday since 1948 was in 2012, when the Giants and Cowboys met in the season opener.

commercials

Netflix promoted its own programming in addition to the usual advertisements. The first teaser trailer for “Happy Gilmore 2” was released ahead of its launch. Adam Sandler is back as Happy Gilmore in the sports comedy, coming to the streaming service in 2025. Travis Kelce was also featured in a trailer full of celebrity cameos, including Bad Bunny and Kid Cudi.

New Christmas tradition

The NFL played its first games on Christmas Day 1971 with two divisional playoff games. The league refrained from playing on December 25th from 1972 to 1988, moving the entire schedule to Saturday when Christmas fell on a Sunday. Since 1989 there have been 30 games on Christmas, never more than three on that day. But the NFL went out of its way to schedule two games Wednesday to honor its $150 million deal with Netflix.

broadcast teams

JJ Watt, three-time AP Defensive Player of the Year and brother of the Steelers’ four-time All-Pro edge rusher TJ Watt, and former NFL wide receiver Nate Burleson shared analyst duties for the Chiefs-Steelers game, with Ian Eagle in the game was -by-play.

“I’m very proud of him and also a little worried that he’s getting close to a lot of my records,” JJ Watt said of his younger brother at the start of the broadcast.

Noah Eagle, Ian’s son, was on play-by-play for the Ravens-Texans game, with former NFL tight end Greg Olsen in the analyst position.

Not a premiere

This wasn’t the first time NFL games were broadcast exclusively on a streaming service. The league’s Thursday night games are in their third season on Amazon Prime Video, Peacock streamed the Packers-Eagles game in São Paulo, Brazil in Week 1 and Prime Video will stream a Wild Card game. Additionally, the Sunday Ticket package moved to YouTube TV last year.

The largest audience for an exclusively streamed NFL game was 23 million on Peacock for last season’s AFC Wild Card game between the Miami Dolphins and Chiefs.

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AP Sports Writer Joe Reedy contributed to this report.

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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL