The first ever YouTube free stream of a regular season game did well, as expected. It didn’t do as well as I personally had expected.

Via Jennifer Maas of Variety.com, Chiefs-Chargers drew a global audience of 17.3 million viewers on Friday night, from Brazil. In the U.S., the number was 16.2 million.

It’s a strong number. It’s up from the 14.2 million who watched Packers-Eagles on Peacock for the first Friday night of the season.

But Peacock is a paid service. The YouTube broadcast was free.

Also, Nielsen has introduced a new system for more accurately counting out-of-home viewers. That will naturally lead to higher numbers than last year.

The all-time streaming record came last Christmas, with more than 24 million domestically for Ravens-Texans (24.3 million) and Chiefs-Steelers

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