The NFL’s Holiday Takeover Is Reaching New Heights

Every Thanksgiving, the NFL likes to say its motto is “family, food, and football.” Well, this coming holiday weekend, the league’s tagline may as well be “football, more football, and even more football.”

Nearly half the league will play in a national broadcast window as seven Week 16 games get standalone audiences across Amazon Prime Video, NBC, Peacock, NFL Network, CBS, Fox, and ABC. By Front Office Sports’ research, that’s a record number for the NFL, which just last week broadcast six games to national audiences. It should be decent action, too. Despite making the Christmas weekend schedule back in May, only four of the 14 teams playing in nationally-televised games have a losing record:

• Thursday:
  • New Orleans (7-7) at Los Angeles Rams (7-7)
• Saturday:
  • Cincinnati (8-6) at Pittsburgh (7-7)
  • Buffalo (8-6) at Los Angeles Chargers (5-9)
• Sunday night:
  • New England (3-11) at Denver (7-7)
• Monday:
  • Las Vegas (6-8) at Kansas City (8-6)
  • New York Giants (5-9) at Philadelphia (10-4)
  • Baltimore (11-3) at San Francisco (11-3)

Monday will mark the NFL’s second attempt at a Christmas Day tripleheader after last year’s trio of games averaged 22.9 million viewers. This year, Christmas falls on a Monday, allowing the league to go all-out in its holiday weekend takeover strategy.

But is that much football on TV a good thing for NFL fans? 

Standalone broadcasts can leave something to be desired when the matchup doesn’t deliver. Last Thursday, Prime Video saw its first viewership decline of 2023 as the Raiders’ 63-21 blowout of the Chargers was down 23% compared to Amazon’s Week 15 game in 2022. And while the seven national broadcasts may be good for advertisers, it will conversely create a less dramatic Sunday afternoon slate of games, with just six in the 1 p.m. window and three in the 4 p.m. slot. Sorry, RedZone fans.

More the Merrier?

While a source with knowledge of the league’s broadcasting operations tells Front Office Sports that fitting more than seven national windows into a single weekend is tough to imagine, the NFL may soon have the chance to do just that. In 2026, Christmas lands on Friday. Imagine this lineup: Thursday night football on Christmas Eve, a Christmas Day tripleheader, two (or three) games on Saturday, and traditional Sunday and Monday night matchups. That could be as many as nine national game broadcasts.

The question is: Are you ready for some football?