Dolphins – Chiefs Game Witnesses Staggering 9.18 Million Record as Germany Challenges American Power

The stage was set, and the Kansas City Chiefs delivered. Germany pulled up and beat the Americans at their own game, that is the NFL viewership. The NFL International Week game between the defending champs and the Dolphins garnered the highest views of any game in the network’s history. It broke the previous year’s record by nearly 70%.

It’s probably not unexpected, however. The Chiefs’ kingdom prepared everything they could to make it memorable for their German fans. And it paid off with interest following their win.

Yet another record-setting night for the Kansas City Chiefs

The overwhelming excitement for the defending champs’ arrival was setting the temperature high for the past few days in Frankfurt, and the game lived up to the hype. Without causing heart attacks, for Mahomes fans at least, the Kansans made easy work of the Dolphins. But the Chiefs invested much more than just 11 players in Deutsche Bank Park, they left some in the Main River as well.

While early forecasts predicted an unwanted guest to spoil the party, the weather cooperated pretty well in the end. It probably a little too well as viewership hit the ceiling, broke through it, and kept going higher. When it finally stopped, it was a replay of week 4’s Chiefs vs Jets game. The NFL network registered a total of 9.18 million views, breaking all existing records in or outside the US.

The previous record for morning games stood at 5.5 million from the previous year’s Seahawks vs Buccaneers game, when people showed up in Munich to watch Tom Brady live. Patrick Mahomes-Travis Kelce also attracted more viewers than last year’s World Series, which closed in at 9.11 million. The all-time NFL record, however, remains safe for now as the 9.86 million views from the 2015 Jets vs Dolphins game in London is yet to be topped.

Germany has a thing or two for the name ‘Football’, it seems. Or, it is maybe just the craze of the Chiefs. But the craze certainly has its limitations. Much to the Americans’ disappointment, the limitations are imposed by their namesake: football, the country’s national sport.

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No matter how many NFL fans tune in for the live broadcasts, they are certainly not topping one-seventh of the world who watched Messi-Neuer live on 14 July 2014.

The German record that blows Kansas City Chiefs out of the competition

The 2014 FIFA World Cup final, which took place on the mentioned date, is still the most-watched game ever broadcasted from the country. A whopping 1.013 billion took part in the grandest show on earth, which was just short of one-seventh of the planet’s 7.34 billion population in 2014. Things go even crazier for the already diminished NFL games, as it was only the third-highest viewership recorded at a sports event.

The top two spots are claimed by the latter editions of the tournament, 2018 and 2022. The 2022 FIFA World Cup final is the most-watched sporting event in history by quite some margin, with 1.5 billion people tuning in for the show last December. Which is more than the population of the continent of Africa, or the continent of North America, South America, and Europe combined.

Clearly, the NFL needs a few hundred Patrick Mahomes playing in different locations around the world to challenge football. But for a nationwide sports, Gridiron does better than any other. The good news is that Germany is slowly embracing the NFL, and it has always been their biggest home outside the US. Maybe some decades from now, if they stick on, the Gridiron could challenge Europe’s biggest domestic leagues. But for now, the fans are happy with what they have, and the Chiefs are going back from Germany with many good memories.

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