{"id":411474,"date":"2026-01-14T03:53:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T03:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/411474\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T03:53:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T03:53:10","slug":"bears-wild-card-win-over-packers-sets-nfl-streaming-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/411474\/","title":{"rendered":"Bears’ wild-card win over Packers sets NFL streaming record"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES — The Chicago Bears<\/a> come-from-behind victory over the Green Bay Packers<\/a> in Saturday’s wild-card round became the first NFL game to have over 30 million viewers on a streaming service.<\/p>\n

The Bears’ 31-27 victory averaged 31.61 million on Amazon Prime Video, according to Nielsen, and broke the previous standard by 4 million. That mark was set on Christmas Day, when Minnesota’s win over Detroit averaged 27.52 million on Netflix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chicago trailed 27-16 with just under seven minutes left in the fourth quarter before Caleb Williams<\/a> threw a pair of touchdown passes to lead the Bears to their first playoff win since the 2010 season.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks<\/p>\n

2 Related<\/p>\n

It was the second year that Prime Video has had a playoff game. Last year’s wild-card game between the Pittsburgh Steelers<\/a> and Baltimore Ravens<\/a> averaged 22.07 million.<\/p>\n

It was the third season the NFL has streamed the Saturday night wild-card game. The AFC wild-card game between the Miami Dolphins<\/a> and Kansas City Chiefs<\/a> during the 2023 season averaged 23 million on Peacock.<\/p>\n

Four of the five games on Saturday and Sunday delivered increases from last year.<\/p>\n

Some of the increase can be attributed to a change in the way viewers are counted. Nielsen began using its Big Data + Panel<\/a> methodology for all events last September with the start of the current television season.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Nielsen began measuring out-of-home viewers for all states but Hawaii and Alaska, along with including data from smart TVs along with cable and satellite set-top boxes.<\/p>\n

Nielsen previously measured only the top 44 media markets, which covered 65% of the country.<\/p>\n

The most-watched game of the weekend was the Sunday late-afternoon game between San Francisco 49ers<\/a> and Philadelphia Eagles<\/a>, which averaged 41 million on Fox. That’s a 14% increase over last year’s game between the Eagles and Green Bay Packers<\/a> in that timeslot.<\/p>\n

The 49ers’ 23-19 victory was the most-watched wild-card game on any network since the 2021 season, when San Francisco against Dallas averaged 41.5 million on CBS.<\/p>\n

Sunday’s game between Buffalo and Jacksonville averaged 32.71 million on CBS, making the Bills’ 27-24 win the most-watched early Sunday AFC wild-card game on any network. It was also a 5% jump over last year’s contest between the Bills and Denver.<\/p>\n

Fox also had Saturday afternoon’s game between the Los Angeles Rams<\/a> and Carolina Panthers. The Rams’ 34-31 win averaged 27.98 million, up 7% from last year’s matchup between the Los Angeles Chargers<\/a> and Houston Texans on CBS.<\/p>\n

It was the most-watched Saturday afternoon wild-card game since NBC averaged 28.30 million for New Orleans against Seattle in 2011.<\/p>\n

New England’s 16-3 victory over the Chargers on NBC averaged 28.9 million, down slightly from the 29 million for last year’s Washington-Tampa Bay game.<\/p>\n

It was the most-watched prime-time event since last February’s Super Bowl on Fox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES — The Chicago Bears come-from-behind victory over the Green Bay Packers in Saturday’s wild-card round became…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-411474","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}