Ratings predictions for Christmas weekend, including the NFL on Christmas Eve and Day, the NBA’s Christmas slate and more. How will the NBA fare against the NFL’s expanded, three-game Christmas lineup?
Can Cowboys-Eagles buck the Christmas Eve trend?
With Christmas falling on a Sunday this year, the NFL plays the bulk of its games this weekend on Christmas Eve Saturday for the first time since 2016. Christmas Eve is traditionally a ratings drag, one of the reasons why few sporting events outside of the Hawaii Bowl are scheduled for the day. Add to that the lower viewing levels on Saturdays as compared to Sundays and one can be sure that Roger Goodell and the NFL are glad Christmas does not fall on a Sunday again until 2033 — a year so far off that the yet-to-begin NFL media rights deals will have expired. The three previous times the NFL played games on Christmas Eve Saturday — 2005, 2011 and 2016 — FOX and CBS underperformed their regular season average (17.5M) by about two million viewers (15.7M).
Saturday’s clash atop the NFC East between the Cowboys and NFL-leading Eagles could well have challenged the 30 million viewer mark had it aired in its usual Sunday window. On Christmas Eve Saturday, set expectations lower. Luckily for FOX, this is such a strong matchup that even a relative underperformance should still deliver good numbers. Anything above 23.1 million would be the league’s largest Christmas Eve audience, regardless of day, this century.
NFL: Eagles-Cowboys (4:25p Sat FOX). Prediction: 23.8M.
Even with bad teams on schedule, expect the NFL to dominate Christmas
Now to the main event. The NFL scheduled three games for Christmas Day this season in a direct challenge to the NBA, just the latest instance of the Goliath of American team sports expanding its territory. The league had never gone beyond two games on Christmas and as recently as two years ago scheduled just one, but last year’s massive audience for Packers-Browns — more than 28 million — made it a virtual lock that the league would seek to maximize its audience on the holiday.
Much has been made of the weak schedule for this year’s Christmas slate. Of the six NFL teams playing on Christmas, only the 8-6 Dolphins have a winning record. The 6-8 Packers and Buccaneers remain in the playoff hunt, with the latter leading their wretched division, but the remaining teams are moribund; the Cardinals, Rams and Broncos each enter the holiday at 4-10.
When it comes to the NFL — particularly on holidays with large, family gatherings — one can usually throw out the records. That does not necessarily mean that the ratings will be completely unaffected by what is, on paper, a weak slate of games. It is hard to imagine Broncos-Rams will come anywhere close to last year’s 28 million for Browns-Packers, even if it still draws a massive audience and swamps its NBA competition. At the same time, there is no other circumstance where a pair of 4-10 teams would draw 20 million viewers in a standalone window. For the NFL, the ability to extract massive standalone audiences from even its worst matchups is what makes holidays like Thanksgiving, and now Christmas, so valuable. The league is unlikely to max out its Christmas potential this season, but a few extra windows in the 20 million range is more than a mere consolation prize.
NFL: Packers-Dolphins (1p Sun FOX). Prediction: 26.4M.
NFL: Broncos-Rams (4:30p Sun CBS, Nickelodeon): 22.5M.
NFL: Buccaneers-Cardinals (8:20p Sun NBC): 20.2M.
Extra ABC games should keep NBA Christmas numbers afloat
Facing its toughest Christmas competition yet, the NBA could not simply stand pat. For the first time, all five NBA Christmas games are being simulcast across both ESPN and ABC — a dramatic change from past years, when only one game was simulcast and the remaining four aired on one network or the other. Simply adding ABC for the Noon and 10:30 games may be enough to boost the Christmas Day audience past last year’s 4.08 million, the league’s lowest average on the holiday in at least 25 years.
That does not mean the numbers will be particularly strong. Beyond the NFL competition, the NBA has to contend with the poor state of its two biggest draws: the 15-18 Warriors and 13-19 Lakers, both of whom enter Christmas shorthanded. Golden State without Stephen Curry has rediscovered its 2019 form, coming off of dreadful drubbings this week at the hands of the Knicks and Nets. The Lakers were subpar even fully healthy and — for the third time in LeBron James’ dispiriting five-year tenure in L.A. — are en route to the lottery. It seems unlikely that either team will draw as well as last Christmas, when the Lakers (in primetime against Brooklyn) attracted 5.75 million and Golden State (in the late afternoon against Phoenix) 5.19 million.
The extra ABC windows should pick up the slack. The resurgent Knicks host the Sixers at Noon ET, a full hour before the NFL gets underway. Last year’s Noon window (Hawks-Knicks) had 2.92 million, and the addition of ABC — plus a better matchup — should be enough for a solid bump, even with NFL competition.
The Suns-Nuggets nightcap — the latest-starting NBA game on broadcast television since CBS aired games after the 11 o’clock news in the 1980s — figures to score a massive jump over last year’s low bar of 1.52 million for Mavericks-Jazz. Look for those increases to cancel out declines for the middle three games.
NBA: Sixers-Knicks (Noon Sun ABC/ESPN). Prediction: 3.86M.
NBA: Lakers-Mavericks (2:30p Sun ABC/ESPN). Prediction: 4.01M.
NBA: Bucks-Celtics (5p Sun ABC/ESPN). Prediction: 4.76M.
NBA: Grizzlies-Warriors (8p Sun ABC/ESPN). Prediction: 4.97M.
NBA: Suns-Nuggets (10:30p Sun ABC/ESPN). Prediction: 2.93M.
Additional predictions
Men’s college basketball: DePaul-Creighton (4:30p Sun FOX). Nothing moves the needle in the college basketball regular season like a direct lead-in from an NFL game. At the end of the season, it is likely DePaul-Creighton will stick out like a sore thumb in charts showing the most-watched games of the season. Prediction: 3.03M.
Last week’s predictions
— FIFA World Cup Final: Argentina-France. Prediction: 14.5M (FOX), 8.2M (TEL); result: 17.9M, 6.1M.
— NFL: Colts-Vikings. Prediction: 5.3M; result: 7.1M.
— NFL: Ravens-Browns. Prediction: 8.2M; result: 9.0M.
— NFL: Dolphins-Bills. Prediction: 11.1M; result: 11.1M.
— NFL: mostly Bengals-Buccaneers. Prediction: 23.1M; result: 21.5M.
— CFB Las Vegas Bowl. Prediction: 2.25M; result: 2.45M.
— CFB New Mexico Bowl. Prediction: 2.50M; result: 2.04M.
— NCAA volleyball championship. Prediction: 1.08M; result: 786K.
