Christmas 2025 Shatters Records: The Biggest Streaming Day in U.S. History

With three streaming-exclusive NFL games and the second part of Stranger Things’ final season debuting, Christmas Day 2025 marked an all-time high in streaming usage. Nielsen says streamers logged 55.1 billion minutes on streaming services on Christmas, breaking the previous high — set on Christmas in 2024 — by 3.9 billion minutes. That amounts to 54 percent of all TV use during the day, also an all-time high for streaming services. The huge day on Christmas — plus another day, Dec. 13, when it had more than half of all TV use — helped push streaming to its highest monthly usage in Nielsen’s Gauge snapshot for December. Streamers had 47.5 percent of all TV use in the United States for the December reporting period (which ran from Dec. 1-28), eclipsing the previous high of 47.3 percent in July 2025. Broadcast networks slipped to 21.4 percent (from 23.2 percent in November), and cable was at 20.2 percent, three tenths of a point lower than the previous month. On Christmas, Netflix’s afternoon NFL doubleheader and Prime Video’s primetime game — along with the new episodes of Stranger Things — helped the two outlets combine for 22.5 percent of all TV use on the day (and almost 42 percent of all streaming). Both services also recorded their highest monthly marks in the Gauge, with Netflix at 9 percent of all TV use and Prime Video at 4.3 percent. The Roku Channel (3 percent) and Paramount’s streamers (2.5 percent) also reached new highs, the latter boosted by Landman on Paramount+. The series starring Billy Bob Thornton had 6.2 billion minutes of viewing for the month, making it the No. 2 streaming title behind Stranger Things’ 15 billion minutes. Nielsen’s Gauge figures for December 2025 are below.