Most concurrent views for a live event on YouTube

Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner's historic freefall from a helium balloon-supported capsule at a jump altitude of 38,969.4 m (127,852 ft) above eastern New Mexico, USA, on 14 October 2012 attracted more than eight million concurrent views on the video-sharing website YouTube, as reported by Google UK.

There are no concurrent viewing figures available for the wedding of Prince William and Catherine "Kate" Middleton on 29 April 2012, an event that was also streamed live by YouTube, although it is known that the wedding ceremony was streamed live 72 million times to 188 countries during the event and 101 million times in total on 29 April 2012. By comparison, approximately 8.3 million people visited the BBC Sport website on the opening day of the London 2012 Olympic Games (27 July).

Baumgartner, 43, from Salzburg, travelled at speeds of up to 1,357.6 km/h (843.6 mi/h), breaking the speed of sound (1,236 km/h; 768 mi/h) when he did it, and freefalling 36,402.6 m (119,431.1 ft) before his parachute was deployed. He spent 4 minutes 20 seconds in freefall. The "edge of space" challenge was officially known as the Red Bull Stratos Mission.

Felix Baumgartner passed away on 17 July 2025. Alongside this record he also achieved a number of incredible feats, including the fastest speed in freefall and becoming the first human to break the sound barrier in freefall.