The NFL is returning to scheduling a Christmas Day tripleheader this season, which commissioner Roger Goodell announced will now be the norm every holiday season.
“I think we will clearly have three games every year,” Goodell said Friday afternoon on The Pat McAfee Show.
Earlier this month at the NFL owners meetings in Palm Beach, the league confirmed its plans for three Dec. 25 games this coming season, with Netflix once again airing two, and Amazon Prime Video streaming the other as part of its Thursday Night Football package, the latter of which was first revealed last spring.
But this is the first confirmation of the NFL’s intent to make the Christmas Day tripleheader an annual occurrence, even if the league’s recent success on the holiday made it more than obvious. Last Christmas, Steelers-Chiefs and Ravens-Texans averaged 24.1 million and 24.3 million viewers, respectively, on Netflix, making them the most-streamed NFL games in U.S. history.
Holiday Planning
The 2025 NFL schedule will be released May 14, the league revealed Thursday night, but specific teams or even matchups set to be played on Christmas and other special occasions could be rolled out earlier, as is often the case.
For decades, the NFL mostly avoided the Christmas spotlight, but in 2022 switched up its strategy and played its first Christmas Day tripleheader, on a Sunday, followed by another one in 2023, on a Monday. This past season, the league shrunk its Christmas presence to two games after initially planning not to play on the holiday, since it fell on a Wednesday.
Goodell’s comments Friday make it clear that no matter what day of the week Christmas falls on moving forward, NFL fans can expect to watch three games. Over the next three years, Christmas falls on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. From 2028 to 2031, when the NFL will likely be opting out of its current media-rights deals, Christmas will fall on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
Turkey Time
Goodell confirmed that several teams are interested in playing an annual Christmas game like the Lions and Cowboys do on Thanksgiving, but reiterated that the NFL has no plans to make any specific franchise a Christmas mainstay.
Speaking of Thanksgiving, though, Goodell said the NFL is likely going to shift the kickoff time of the first Thanksgiving Day game: “One little small change: We’re probably going to move from a 12:30 p.m. ET start to 1. So, we’ll go back to the traditional windows.”
In recent years, the early Thanksgiving game has kicked off at 12:30 p.m. ET and the late game at 4:30 p.m. ET, which is slightly different than the standard Sunday afternoon game times of 1 p.m. ET and 4:25 p.m. ET for national TV windows.
