The NFL’s recent incursion into Christmas Day, traditionally the most-watched day of the NBA regular season, has been interpreted as a stealing of lunch money by the swaggering bully of the sports schoolyard. Realistically, the NBA’s years-long ownership of Christmas Day was primarily a function of the calendar and the NFL’s ambivalence toward the holiday.
Every time the NFL has played games on Christmas, it has utterly dominated. It dominates today, it dominated in the 2000s, it even dominated in the 1990s. Except for 2009 and 2010 — when the league’s only Christmas games aired on NFL Network — the NFL has delivered the largest sports audience on every Christmas it has played: 1989, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2011, 2016, 2017, 2020, 2021 and 2022. Unlike the NFL vs. the World Series, a head-to-head that has completely flipped over the past 15 years, the NFL vs. the NBA on Christmas has always been a lopsided fight.
NFL vs. NBA Christmas Day viewership
In 1989, the first year the NFL began scheduling regular season games on Christmas, Bengals-Vikings averaged a 19.4 rating and 33.06 million viewers on ABC — a figure unsurpassed by any subsequent game on the holiday. The same day, CBS (carrying its final Christmas game in its run with the NBA) averaged a 3.4 and 4.83 million for Hawks-Cavaliers. The 28 million viewer gap was not quite as yawning in subsequent years, as new NBA rightsholder NBC prioritized higher-profile Christmas Day matchups, but the hierarchy never changed. When the NFL competed on Christmas, it won in a rout.
In 1994, Lions-Dolphins on cable (16.06M) averaged nearly ten million more viewers than Knicks-Bulls on NBC, an overtime classic that still re-airs annually on NBA TV (6.28M). In 1995, Cowboys-Cardinals on ABC (25.35M) nearly tripled Rockets-Magic on NBC, a Finals rematch that went down to the final seconds (8.97M). When Shaq and Kobe played each other for the first time on Christmas Day 2004 — still the most-watched NBA Christmas Day game in the past 30 years (13.18M) — Raiders-Chiefs was the most-watched game of the day (15.79M). When the NBA opened its lockout-shortened season with five Opening Day games on Christmas 2011 — still the league’s most-watched five-game Christmas slate — it was Bears-Packers that cruised to the day’s top sports audience (24.02M).
Perhaps nothing better exemplifies the Christmas Day hierarchy than the following. The largest NBA Christmas Day audience on record is 15.35 million for Magic-Bulls on NBC in 1993. One might credit that figure to Michael Jordan, but the game occurred months into his first retirement. More than 15 million viewers for the Jordan-less Bulls? The same squad that, the very next year against the heated rival Knicks, would muster barely six million on the holiday? It seems a bit incongruous until one checks the schedule. Airing immediately beforehand was an Oilers-49ers NFL game (26.68M), part of an NBC NBA/NFL Christmas tripleheader. Indeed, the most-watched NBA Christmas Day game was the only one to have a direct lead-in from the NFL.
All of which is to say that the only thing that has really changed in recent years is the priority the NFL places on Christmas Day. What for the NBA has long been the most important date on the regular season calendar has, for the NFL, been comparably insignificant. That began to change with the inclusion of out-of-home viewing in Nielsen’s viewership estimates in 2020. While ‘out-of-home’ may connote bars or viewing parties, it includes any viewership outside of one’s home — including family gatherings like Christmas and Thanksgiving.
Out-of-home has turbocharged that already-strong holiday viewership. On the first traditional Christmas of the out-of-home era, 2021, Browns-Packers delivered a whopping 28.59 million viewers across FOX and NFL Network — not just the league’s largest Christmas audience since ’89 but one of the top games that season. It is no surprise the league expanded the Christmas schedule from two to three games for the following year. While Christmas is still a far cry from Thanksgiving for the NFL, it has much more value for the league today than five, ten or 20 years ago. Thus, do not expect the NFL to cede Christmas Day back to the NBA any time soon, except for the years when it falls in the middle of the week (like next year).
Ratings predictions
As for this year’s Christmas games, the NFL scheduled as strong a line-up as it could muster (short of including the Cowboys). The afternoon features two traditional rivalries as Super Bowl squads the Chiefs and Eagles host the Raiders and Giants respectively. Neither Las Vegas nor New York are good, but they have both played respectable ball in recent weeks. The main event is Ravens-49ers in primetime, a potential Super Bowl preview featuring the teams with the best records in each conference. Considering that last year’s Christmas slate was a relative dud, featuring a lousy Broncos-Rams game (22.57M) and a forgettable pairing of the Buccaneers and Cardinals (17.15M), an increase in viewership seems assured.
For the NBA, it figures to be a blue Christmas in the ratings. The expectation among those in the know is that it will be the league’s least-watched Christmas. That seems likely, as the NFL is not just offering tough competition, but occupying the NBA’s lead broadcast partner ABC. When Christmas last fell on a Monday, 2017, Monday Night Football was still airing exclusively on ESPN — leaving ABC free for NBA games. That is obviously not the case this year. ABC will carry just two games as a result, the fewest since 2016. That alone will sink the ratings. Last year’s Christmas slate topped out at 6.08 million for Bucks-Celtics.
— NFL: Raiders-Chiefs (1p, CBS), Giants-Eagles (4:30p, FOX) and Ravens-49ers (8:15p, ABC). Predictions: 25.38, 26.01 and 29.93 million viewers respectively.
— NBA: Warriors-Nuggets (2:30p, ABC/ESPN) and Celtics-Lakers (5p, ABC/ESPN). Predictions: 5.15 and 5.97 million viewers respectively.
