On Christmas Day in 2022, the Los Angeles Rams’ Cobie Durant picked off a pass from Denver Broncos back-up quarterback Brett Rypien with about four minutes left in the game. Durant went the distance for a pick-6, which after a field-goal put the Rams up, 51-14.
It was a blowout game between two teams that came into the night with a combined record of 8-20. Sure, the Rams were coming off a Super Bowl, but they were having an injury-plagued season. There’s no way anyone was watching this game, right?
Wrong. In fact, the game averaged over 22.5 million viewers across CBS and Nickelodeon despite the Rams building a lead of 28 points in the first half.
It seems America just can’t get enough of the NFL, even during a day that’s traditionally been reserved for NBA viewership.
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For comparison, in 2022, the NBA averaged 4.3 million viewers across its slate of games, with its top game averaging over 6 million viewers.
The NFL often trumps the NBA in terms of average viewership per game, and while Christmas Day happened to fall on a Sunday that year, the NFL decided not to step out of the way.
The success of the NFL’s first ever three-game Christmas slate in 2022 led them to doing another trio of games on Christmas Day in 2023, which also happened to fall on a Monday, one of the NFL’s traditional days.
Those three contests averaged nearly 28.7 million viewers, an NFL record according to Sports Media Watch, while the NBA only saw 2.8 million viewers across its five-game slate, a record for the league.
While NBA viewership has been stagnant as of recent years compared to the growing viewership of many other sports leagues, it seemed like it was at least going to get Christmas back for a few years because the NFL was not going to add Dec. 25 games on days when the holiday landed on Tuesday or Wednesday, according to the Wall Street Journal.
This made sense as the NFL normally follows a strict calendar to ensure its players get enough rest between games. Most games were played on Sundays, and teams who played the occasional game on Monday, Thursday, or Saturday often were expecting a “short week” to prepare for their next contest.
But Front Office Sports reported on Tuesday, March 26 that the NFL is actually going to put up two games during Christmas this year — despite the holiday falling on a Tuesday.
The NFL likely couldn’t resist the viewership and interest from networks for the games. FOS reported on Thursday, March 28, that the league is going to put the two Christmas games up for bid starting at $50 million apiece, and it’s likely that number will end up in the nine-figures.
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That is in line with the $100 million that Amazon Prime Video reportedly paid out for the NFL’s first Black Friday game last year.
And to address the situation about rest, the league will reportedly have the Christmas game participants play on Saturday, Dec. 21, which would give the teams the same amount of rest as they would for a usual “Thursday Night Football” game. Teams would likely be playing different opponents on Dec. 21 and Dec. 25.
Given all of this, it appears the NBA is starting to lose its grip on Christmas. As the ratings continue to fall, the NFL is not succumbing to the same downward trajectory as its fellow major sports league.
Above all of this looms the NBA’s next media rights deal, which is slated to kick-in starting the 2025-26 season. The league is looking for a huge increase from the approximately $2.7 billion it receives per year — but moves like this could put that ceiling in jeopardy.
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