Beyoncé Bowl hits Netflix (again)
Here's a little something for all the "anti-sports ball" kids out there who made the "There's a football game going on at this Beyoncé concert?" joke this year. Beyoncé Bowl is now on Netflix, sans any of the football that took place on December 25. It's just 13 minutes of pure, unadulterated Beyoncé performance with her typical high-level production values and perfectionist attention to detail.
Unlike her previous Netflix movie Homecoming: A Film By Beyoncé, this special doesn't include any of the behind-the-scenes of the pop star conceptualizing and rehearsing for the main event. As you can probably tell by the run time, it's just the main event. However, it is notable for being the first-ever live performance of songs from Cowboy Carter, which recently became the second-most Grammy nominated album of all time (behind Michael Jackson's Thriller) and the most nominated album by a female artist. (The record also made her the most nominated artist for the 2025 awards but also the most nominated artist of all time, in addition to already being the most awarded artist in the ceremony's history.) She was joined during the halftime set by her daughter Blue Ivy Carter, who performed as a dancer, as well as collaborators Shaboozey, Post Malone, Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, and Tiera Kennedy, and performed tracks like "YA YA" and "TEXAS HOLD 'EM," which made her the first Black woman to top the Billboard Hot 100 with a country song.
The Beyoncé bet paid off big time for Netflix. Nielsen reports that the streamer's brand-new NFL partnership featured the most-streamed games in NFL history, averaging around 24 million viewers, according to a Netflix press release. But the audience peaked for Beyoncé Bowl during the Ravens-Texans halftime show, garnering over 27 million viewers. It's not quite Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson numbers (that fight reportedly peaked with 38 million concurrent streams in the U.S.), but it ain't bad, especially for a company still working out the kinks for live events.