A burning sports-related questions heated up a notch further last weekend when Yahoo offered up the world’s first free, global live stream of a regular-season NFL game: Can live online sports be as good as sports on TV?

The answer, according to The Hollywood Reporter, appears to be a resounding “yes.”

The Sunday match-up between the Buffalo Bills and the Jacksonville Jaguars was streamed live from London’s Wembley Stadium, and reached more than 33.6 million total views across all devices on Yahoo and Tumblr and more than 15.2 million unique viewers. Viewers streamed more than 460 million total minutes of the game, Yahoo reported, which equates to 30.26 minutes per unique viewer. Thirty-three percent of streams came in internationally from across 185 countries, and more than 30 brands partnered with Yahoo for the event.

“We are incredibly excited by the fact that we took a game that would have been viewed by a relatively limited television audience in the United States, and by distributing it digitally were able to attract a global audience of over 15 million viewers,” said Hans Schroeder, SVP of media strategy, business development and sales for the NFL.

The NFL claims that an average of around 17.6 million viewers tune in to CBS Sports’ Thursday Night Football each week, and that about 13.5 million average viewers watch Monday Night Football. Yahoo’s 15.2 million figure is expected to grow significantly in the coming days, by as much as 1 million unique views once digital numbers from markets such as China are counted. Yahoo reportedly paid the NFL $20 million for rights to the stream and sold 30-second spots around it at prices between $50,000 and $200,000. The company’s original series streaming efforts have taken some big hits in recent weeks, but its live events, such as the concert-a-day deal it recently struck with Live Nation, seem to be viable.

And, with one of the most popular fantasy football apps, Yahoo has some strong cross-promotional efforts available for future NFL opportunities. Most NFL games are locked up in long-term deals, but not all of them. CBS Sports’ rights to Thursday Night Football, for instance, expire after this year, leaving the door open a crack for Yahoo, or another streaming giant, to step on through.

Read more at The Hollywood Reporter.

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