It was only a matter of time before the ever-hungry corporate behemoth that is the NFL gobbled up every bit of real estate on the fall and winter sports calendar for itself. And after the past two years it’s official: the NFL owns Christmas.
The NFL has made it clear under Roger Goodell’s leadership it doesn’t care about social justice, it doesn’t care about professional etiquette, it doesn’t care about unspoken agreements, or anything. The only thing the NFL cares about is money and how to get more of it.
So, you should not have been surprised when the league schedule was debuted and there were three (in theory) marquee games scheduled for Christmas, with the rest of the schedule taking place on Thursday, Saturday, and Monday.
Really, the NFL’s shift to try to own Christmas began in earnest in 2021, when it scheduled a pair of games in national windows on Christmas, which fell on a Saturday. It’s full out assault on winning the holiday came this year. In 2023, Christmas is on a Monday, and I’ll be flabbergasted if the only game on the schedule is Monday Night Football.
The NFL is completely in on Christmas from here on out. Even when the holiday falls on Tuesday, don’t be shocked to see the league schedule two or three games in the future. The only day where it may not make sense is when Christmas is a Wednesday. That schedule might be too tough to pull off that late in the season without risking having the same teams play in national windows on Wednesday and then again on the following Monday.
However, the NFL making the decision to “own” Christmas is one of the rare issues where it didn’t act alone in it’s complete money grab. The league got the slightest push from it’s TV partners not named ESPN, and fell head-over-heels in love with the idea of owning another day to itself. The NFL already has Thanksgiving in it’s back pocket, and will try to gobble up Black Friday in 2023 with a game on Amazon Prime Video. It’s only a matter of time until the league begins playing its season-opening game on Labor Day — in primetime, no doubt — and schedules the Super Bowl on the Sunday before President’s Day to ensure it holds the entire fall/winter calendar to itself.
There will come a time when the NFL will need a new television package to slice up and sell off to the highest bidder. Can you foresee a “holiday”/International package? The season opening game on Labor Day, a game on Halloween night with special uniforms, a Thanksgiving tripleheader, followed by Christmas Eve or Christmas Day games, in addition to games in Europe. Paired with the option to put a game or two on New Years Day, College Football Playoff or bowl games be damned. I’m assuming the NFL would love to make another $500 million a year from some suitable new partner — TBS/TNT, perhaps? — for 8-10 games on the schedule to help grow those ever expanding revenue sheets.
But, as I mentioned, the league didn’t act alone. FOX, NBC, and CBS propelled the league to this. And it makes sense, for a very long time, those networks simply allowed the ESPN/ABC/NBA triumvirate to control the holiday, and everyone else took a backseat. But now with simply the sheer amount of dollars put into sports television rights, you can’t concede any day. You can’t just allow your competition to have a win.
So, rather than pull in paltry ratings with re-runs of The Big Bang Theory, the Westminster Dog Show, and whatever second-rate Christmas movie marathon the networks decided to air while millions tuned into the premier NBA matchups of the season, FOX, NBC, and CBS decided to get in on the action.
Now that those networks have had a taste of the Christmas Day ratings bonanza, it’s unlikely they give it up anytime soon. Soon, the NBA and ESPN will long for the days that — for one single day — it was the 10,000 pound gorilla on the block. It will reminisce about the days where it was simply understood that it owned the sports schedule for the day. Because those days are over. The NFL now owns Christmas, like it owns every other Sunday, Monday, and Thursday between September and January. And there’s nothing you can do about it.
Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing bi-weekly industry features and a weekly column. He has previously served as Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH, and is the radio play-by-play voice of Northern Michigan University hockey. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
