The announcement by Netflix, on Sunday evening, that Beyoncé will headline the halftime show for the Texans-Ravens clash in Houston on Christmas Day, has ignited a ticket frenzy. Online ticketing platform Vivid Seats revealed a stunning 40% overnight surge in the average resale ticket price, skyrocketing from $378 to $528.
Similarly, SeatGeek, another prominent ticket vendor, witnessed a 9% jump in the average resale ticket price, pushing demand 26% above the standard Texans home game pricing. As of Monday afternoon, the cheapest ticket available stood at $293, while ticket sales soared eightfold compared to the previous day, positioning this matchup among the top five most sought-after Texans home games in SeatGeek's history.
The Houston Texans' Vivid Seats page experienced a breathtaking 218% traffic spike overnight, and the Texans-Ravens game page saw an astonishing 713% increase in visitors. The most exclusive single ticket listed for sale on Vivid Seats, as of Monday afternoon, fetched an astonishing $9,000.
In May, the NFL unveiled its groundbreaking deal with Netflix to broadcast football games over the next three years, including two Christmas Day showdowns in 2024: the Kansas City Chiefs versus the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens versus the Houston Texans. These will mark the NFL's inaugural games on Netflix, which has also committed to streaming "at least one game" in both 2025 and 2026. Netflix's venture into live events began in earnest in 2023, with Chris Rock's comedy special, the Screen Actors Guild Awards in February, a roast of quarterback Tom Brady in May, and most recently, a highly anticipated boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul on Friday night.
Netflix reported a peak of over 65 million concurrent streams for the Paul-Tyson bout, although it wasn't immune to technical issues. Down Detector, a platform that tracks web complaints, logged 88,000 streaming problem reports on Friday night, with social media ablaze with criticisms of the broadcast. These concerns have led to trending worries about the Christmas Day games on X, formerly Twitter. Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports, posted on X before the fight, describing the broadcast as "unwatchable" due to lagging, frozen screens, and buffering. Last year's three Thanksgiving NFL games garnered an average of 34.1 million viewers, setting a holiday record, while the three 2023 Christmas Day games averaged 28.4 million viewers.
