December 2024 is on tap to be one of the craziest months in NFL history.
Less than four months after saying there wouldn’t be any Christmas games scheduled for 2024, the NFL changed its mind. The NFL will play on Christmas in 2024 despite the holiday landing on a Wednesday, marking a reversal from the league’s previous stance.
This was a shocker that will add to an already crazy week in December.
Mark Maske of the Washington Post reported that NFL Vice President of Media Distribution Hans Schroeder said Tuesday that there will be two Christmas Day games in 2024. Jonathan Jones of CBS Sports further added that the huge ratings drawn by Christmas Day games have prompted the NFL to reverse its previous stance on not holding games on Wednesdays.
The NFL plays weekly games on Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays, plus it usually plays Saturday games late in the season.
During that Christmas week, there will be games on Christmas, the following day on the 26th, the 28th, the 29th, the 30th, and then there will be the College Football Quarterfinals on the 31st and on January 1st.
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Fans took to social media going crazy:
Last season, the NFL began the annual tradition of playing a game on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. The league has typically tried to avoid playing games on Tuesdays and Wednesdays due to the scheduling issues it can create, but once dollar signs show differently, things can change rather quickly.
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The league will now have to figure out how to stop teams from playing on short weeks. Bye weeks are usually all done by this time so the league may have to extend them to prevent short rest and players getting injured.
With the NFL smashing records on Christmas Day 2023, it was obvious that they would try and capitalize on it going forward.
The NFL Dominated The NBA In Christmas Ratings
For the fourth year in a row in 2023, the NFL had at least one game on Christmas Day.
The NBA, which has a long tradition of Christmas games dating back to 1947, had a full slate of matchups.
Viewership numbers via Front Office Sports show it wasn’t a close fight for viewers on Christmas as CBS had an average audience of 29.2 million viewers, making it the most-watched Christmas Day NFL regular season game.
The NBA’s biggest rated game was the Lakers and Celtics which had 5.0 million viewers.
