Christmas 2024 is Nielsen’s most-streamed TV day ever

NFL, Red One, Carry On, Elf, A Christmas Story, Home Alone and … Virgin River Among Top Programming for the day 

Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, MAX, Disney+, Peacock and Paramount+ All Land Titles in Top 15 for the day of December 25

New York – February 7, 2025 – Nielsen, a global leader in audience measurement, data and analytics, today announced that December 25, 2024 was the most-streamed day of television in the U.S., in its history of measurement. 

December 2024 saw one of the biggest changes in the TV ecosystem as Netflix exclusively live-streamed two Christmas Day NFL games. While the games delivered record viewing for the streaming service, they also helped set another, broader record: the most streaming ever recorded in a single day, and the only streaming day in Nielsen’s audience measurement history to exceed 50 billion viewing minutes (51,218,510,400 to be exact). Streaming represented half of total TV consumption on Christmas Day (49.5%). The second most-streamed day in history fell on January 11, 2025, which also coincided with Prime Video streaming an NFL Wild Card round game.  

While NFL led the way, multiple streaming services saw success on Christmas, with Prime Video, Hulu, MAX, Disney+, Peacock and Paramount+ all placing titles in the Top 15 for the day of December 25. 

“This is a Christmas story of how all streamers are finding success balancing new and evergreen programming on streaming,” said Brian Fuhrer, SVP of Product Strategy, Nielsen. “While live football was the highest profile and most-viewed, the diverse slate of original and classic shows and movies really resonated with audiences.” 

Note: In order to maximize comparability, Out of Home and Digital (PC and Mobile) viewing, which combined for approximately a 40% lift, were excluded from the Netflix NFL Games.

Nielsen is the leader in streaming TV measurement. The Nielsen Streaming Top 10, The Gauge and the Media Distributor Gauge are trusted sources of truth for the industry. 

Nielsen has made a number of recent product innovations. On February 3, the company announced its Out-of-Home (OOH) measurement now covers 100% of the US contiguous television population. In January 2025, Nielsen was accredited for Big Data + Panel measurement, which represents its biggest measurement enhancement in a generation. This followed accreditation for a first-party live streaming solution in November 2024. 

About Nielsen 

Nielsen is a global leader in audience measurement, data and analytics. Through our understanding of people and their behaviors across all channels and platforms, we empower our clients with independent and actionable intelligence so they can connect and engage with their global audiences—now and into the future. 

For advertisers, agencies, and publishers, Nielsen has recently expanded Nielsen ONE to include outcomes capabilities, in addition to advanced audiences, planning and measurement. Nielsen’s measurement is powered by person-level data from panels of over 1.2 million individuals and backed by the scale of the industry’s largest big data footprint and broadest coverage across digital, linear, streaming, and CTV.Learn more at www.nielsen.com and connect with us on social media (X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram).

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