YouTube Sets Live-Stream Viewing Record with NFL Opening Night

If your marketing effort has any relation to sports engagement, this is worth noting.

Over the weekend, YouTube hosted its first-ever NFL Opening Night broadcast, with YouTube winning the exclusive rights to air the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers from São Paulo, Brazil.

And the event drew massive numbers for the app.

As per YouTube:

“Our first-ever exclusive, global broadcast of an NFL game set a record for most concurrent viewers of a live stream on YouTube, drawing a global audience of over 17.3M average-minute-audience (AMA). This included 16.2M AMA in the U.S. (according to Nielsen) and 1.1M AMA outside of the U.S. (according to YouTube).”

YouTube says that viewers tuned in from over 230 countries to catch the stream, underlining the popularity of the NFL, and sports more broadly, as well as YouTube’s value as a mainstream broadcaster in this respect.

Because really, YouTube now is the mainstream.

YouTube is now the biggest streaming video service in the U.S., and with Connected TV viewing (i.e. people watching YouTube content on their home TV sets) continuing to grow, it’s legitimately a competitor for traditional TV channels in many respects.

And with YouTube’s more advanced ad targeting tools and options, that could make it an increasingly valuable consideration for your campaigns, enabling broad reach to sports fans, with hyper-targeted, even AI-facilitated targeting to maximize reach and resonance.

YouTube’s been looking to boost awareness of the upcoming NFL season over the past week, even partnering with top creator MrBeast on an NFL-aligned promotion.

It also incorporated a range of creators into its NFL broadcast, showcasing the potential of YouTube stars to reach new audiences, and boost engagement in the app.

And it proved to be a valuable showcase of YouTube’s potential in this respect, which will likely see even more sports leagues considering the platform as a broadcast partner.

Which will facilitate more opportunities for brands to link into the broader hype around sports in the app.