Dive Brief:

• Sunday morning in the U.S. was the timeframe for the first online livestream of an NFL game streamed by Yahoo.
• The livecast ad spots sold out in advance of the event, but Toyota was the only top NFL sponsor to be part of the live stream.
• Viewership was much lower than a broadcast NFL game, but advertisers also paid less than a tenth of afternoon broadcast games.

Dive Insight:

Yahoo hosted the first NFL game to be livecast internationally online Sunday morning, and by most accounts the event was a success.

Advertising sold out in advance of the livecast, but Toyota was the only top NFL sponsor to take part, buying two spots plus sponsoring the halftime show. DraftKings, Verizon and FanDuel, the current top three NFL advertisers where nowhere to be seen on the stream.

The game received much lower viewership than a standard broadcast NFL game with 15.2 million unique viewers although that number only counts anytime the stream was opened for any amount of time rather than someone actively watching the game, and Yahoo autoplayed the stream on a number of its websites. CNNMoney put the average viewership per minute at 2.36 million versus broadcast NFL games that typically average 10 to 20 million average viewership per minute. Of course advertisers were able to tap that international audience at rates less than a tenth of what they would pay for a broadcast game.