Last Sunday, Yahoo broadcasted the London showdown between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Buffalo Bills; the first ever livestream of an NFL football game.

Shortly after, the league revealed some of the viewership statistics from the event. While impressive, they're still no match for a traditional TV audience.

According to the NFL, the game attracted 33.6 million total views and 15.2 million viewers; a huge numbers for sure - but some careful analysis reveals that these figures don't tell the whole story.

CNN reported that 460 million total minutes of video were played during the game's 195 minute duration. This equates to an average 2.36 million per-minute viewership. In contrast, the average Sunday afternoon NFL broadcast garners about 10 to 20 million viewers per minute, says the network.

In addition to this, Yahoo opted to have the broadcast 'auto-play' on several of its websites such as the yahoo homepage and fantasy sports portals as well other properties like Tumblr. The company itself claims that 43 million people access the homepage each day, which no doubt helped boost the viewership count considerably.

Regardless, the move is certainly a strong first step and sets the stage for more live sports on the internet in the future.

"It's been a great opportunity to partner with the NFL and deliver a truly exceptional global live streaming experience for our users," said Adam Cahan, Yahoo's SVP of Product and Engineering, in the NFL's official release. We're seeing a dramatic shift in the industry as audiences' primary video watching moves away from TV. We were thrilled to join the NFL in setting a new standard for sports programming for our users and advertisers."

The league closes the release by saying: 'All these numbers boil down to one simple fact: Get ready for more streaming NFL games.'