The NFL is ready to do something it has never done before on Christmas Day. Mike North, the NFL’s vice president of broadcasting revealed on the Sal Sports and Stuff podcast that the league is planning to have a tripleheader on Dec. 25. North is part of a small group that puts the schedule together each year. The interesting thing about this year is Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, which means the majority of games will be played on Christmas Eve (Saturday).
“We will play on Saturday night (Christmas Eve) on NFL Network and then when we get to Sunday, Christmas Day, we’ll have a tripleheader,” North said, per CBS Sports. “We’ll play one game on CBS afternoon, one game on Fox afternoon and our regular Sunday night game on NBC.”
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North also said the Christmas Day games will kick off at 1 p.m. ET, 4 p.m. ET and 8:15 p.m. ET. Normally, Christmas Day is for the NBA as a series of games are played throughout the day. But at least for this year, the NFL will also be on display on the holiday, and while North understands how much Christmas means for the NBA, he also knows how well NFL games do on that day when it comes to ratings.
“Christmas, when it falls on an NFL game day, we’ve had a lot of success there, with all due respect to our friends at the NBA,” North said. “When we can play football on Christmas, it has proven to be something that our fans are interested in.” North went on to talk about the ratings for the last three games played on Christmas. “We had Minnesota-New Orleans [in 2020], that game did 20 million viewers,” North said. “We had Cleveland-Green Bay last year, that game did 30 million viewers. It was followed by Indy-Arizona on NFL Network and that one performed well. Our fans are telling us — we know they watch on Thanksgiving — they’re happy to watch on Christmas. When we can, we’ll find games for windows on Christmas.” Who will play on Christmas Day is yet to be determined as the NFL will announce the schedule on May 12. There will be key games announced before then, which could mean fans night learn the Christmas Day schedule soon.
