NFL Determined To Steal Christmas From NBA, Planning For Wednesday Doubleheader This Year
Outside the NBA Finals, Christmas Day is the most important day on the league's calendar. Each year, the NBA schedules some of its biggest matchups on Christmas, trying to capitalize on Americans being at family gatherings with the television set on. But the NFL got a taste of that audience, and it isn't planning to let the NBA dominate the holiday any longer.
Despite previous assertions that the NFL won't force games on Christmas Day by playing on an unusual day of the week, the league has officially changed course. Even though Christmas Day 2024 falls on a Wednesday, the NFL is planning to play two regular season games. This will mark the fifth-consecutive year that the league holds a game on the biggest holiday on the United States calendar.
This is significant for many reasons. The first, and most obvious, is that the NFL does not play games on Wednesday. The last NFL game played on a Wednesday came during the COVID season when the league was forced to move a contest between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens to mid-week because of positive COVID tests among the teams.
Prior to that, the only NFL game played on a Wednesday in the modern era came in 2012 when the league moved its opening night matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants up from the traditional Thursday slot to Wednesday night to avoid conflicting with a speech delivered by then-President Barack Obama.
Of course, that schedule change didn't have a huge impact – it was the first game of the season. But playing two games on a Wednesday in the middle of the season does bring into play many scheduling challenges. The four teams playing in the Christmas Day game this year almost certainly will have to have their bye week during the preceding week – or perhaps two of the teams might play on the preceding Thursday night.
Either way, the league made the decision that adjusting the schedule in this way is worth it for the payoff. That payoff is massive viewership. The NFL drew at least 27 million viewers for all three Christmas Day games in 2023.
NFL fans watch with a Merry Christmas sign during a game between the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars.
(Nathan Ray Seebeck/USA TODAY Sports)
The question is which networks will get to air these games, which are likely to be a very desirable matchups. In 2023, the NFL had three games and split them among CBS, FOX and ESPN. Christmas Day fell on a Monday, so ESPN got to keep its usual Monday Night Football game, with CBS and FOX getting the afternoon slots.
That also means that the NFL will have games played on five days in a six-day stretch. And that leads right into the new expanded College Football Playoff.
This is an absolute no-brainer for the NFL, which is the most popular league in America. It's a crushing blow to the NBA, which cannot compete with the NFL. Many pundits tried to tell us years ago that the NBA would eventually overtake the NFL in popularity, but the exact opposite has happened. The NFL continues to add viewers, while the NBA hemorrhages them.
Competing with the NFL is a nightmare for the NBA, and if the NFL has made the decision to play on Christmas Day every year moving forward – which certainly seems like a possibility – it's another devastating loss taken by the NBA.