The NFL will embark on a new Christmas Day tradition starting this year. Christmas Day games have been played in the past throughout the NFL, but only on special occasions.
That changes Wednesday, as the league will play Christmas Day games in the middle of the week for the first time. The NFL will also debut its newest broadcast partner when the Christmas Day games will be played, as the league will stream the games on Netflix.
This will be the first NFL game on Netflix, which has dipped its foot into live sports over the past year. The streaming service aired two network-created events, The Netflix Cup in golf and The Netflix Slam in tennis, along with the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul exhibition fight in October. Netflix also acquired rights to WWE Monday Night Raw (starting in January) and the FIFA Women's World Cup in 2027 and 2031.
The NFL landed a $150 million deal from Netflix to broadcast Christmas games this year. Netflix and the NFL also reached an agreement to broadcast Christmas games in each of the next three seasons. Under the terms of the Netflix deal, the NFL will have two games on Christmas this season and "at least" one Christmas Day game in 2025 and 2026 (Christmas falls on Thursday in 2025 and Friday in 2026 in those years). How will the league handle these Christmas Day games on a Wednesday, a day typically absent on the NFL calendar and falls in the middle of the week?
Here's where the Saturday games from Week 16 came into play. The four teams that will play on Christmas (Kansas City Chiefs, Pittsburgh Steelers, Houston Texans, Baltimore Ravens) all played on Saturday to have the same turnaround as these teams would have from a Sunday afternoon game to a Thursday night game -- three days between games.
This is how the NFL got away with playing Christmas Day games on a Wednesday. They had to accommodate a three-day rest for these teams so they could play in the middle of the week. In past years, Christmas Day games were played if the holiday fell on a Saturday, Sunday or Monday -- days the league usually plays games in December. There were special edition games that were played on a Friday in 2009 and 2020, but they were part of the "Thursday Night Football" package.
The league has played Christmas Day games in each of the past five years. Based on the Netflix deal, this will be an annual tradition for the NFL for the next several seasons. Amazon Prime Video will also have a game on Christmas as part of its "Thursday Night Football" package next year, so the Christmas games aren't going away.
The NFL has slowly begun a tradition of playing games on Christmas, and the league won't be stopping any time soon with the ratings (over 28 million people watched Christmas games last year) and the money ($150 million this year from Netflix).
Christmas games are here to stay.