Netflix streamed two NFL games and got a TV-sized audience

• Netflix didn’t crash when it streamed two NFL games on Christmas.
• Even better for the NFL and Netflix: The streaming-only games got audiences that were only a bit smaller than a TV game.
• Streaming live sports used to be a novelty. Not anymore.

Netflix passed two tests on Wednesday when it streamed live NFL football games for the first time in its history.

First: Netflix managed to stream the games around the world without widespread tech foul-ups that plagued its Mike Tyson-Jake Paul boxing exhibition/stunt last month.

Second: Netflix managed to attract the kind of audience for the games that you’d expect from the NFL, which is continually the most popular thing on conventional TV.

The NFL and the streamer say that both of Wednesday’s games — the Kansas City Chiefs vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens vs. the Houston Texans — averaged around 24 million viewers in the US. That’s a record for streaming NFL games in the country. (Those initial numbers may swell a bit once the NFL, Netflix, and Nielsen scour for additional viewers.)

The biggest audience — around 27 million viewers — showed up for the “Beyoncé Bowl” — a halftime performance during the Ravens/Texans game, featuring, of course, Beyoncé.

For comparison, last year, the NFL attracted an average of some 28 million US viewers for the two games it broadcast on Christmas Day, via conventional TV networks. (Netflix’s numbers don’t include viewers outside the US; it says it will report back on those on December 31. Netflix says the audience for the Tyson/Paul event peaked at 65 million worldwide and 38 million in the US.)

All of which means that when Netflix streams Christmas games again next year, and again in 2027, it won’t seem like a novelty. It will just be the most popular sport on TV, delivered via a streaming service.

This is what both Netflix and the NFL want, for slightly different reasons. The NFL is always looking for another outlet that will pay it top dollar for the right to show its games — Netflix paid the NFL a reported $150 million for this year’s games — and Netflix wants high-profile live events as a way to boost its nascent ad business.

Win-win. This is what the NFL has been finding every time it sells streaming rights to digital players over the years, including Yahoo, Twitter, Amazon, and Google.

While we are here, a couple other notes:

• While there was some discussion of Netflix trying to make its NFL coverage unique, I couldn’t discern anything meaningfully different about the games from any others I’ve watched this year. Which, again, is the point: The NFL wants the product to look the same no matter where you see it. (And if there is a desire for something different on the part of fans, I have yet to discern it.)

• Netflix streaming NFL games for the first time is meaningful to the NFL, Netflix, and people who pay attention to the media business. But in my 100% unscientific poll of people in the real world, no one knew Netflix had the games. And when they found out, they didn’t care, which makes sense: Neither game was particularly important, or suspenseful. But for Netflix and the NFL that wasn’t the point.