With 25 December falling on a Wednesday this 12 months, the NFL initially mentioned it wasn’t trying to have a Christmas recreation in 2024.
In March, the league introduced it had a change of coronary heart. Then in Might the NFL agreed a three-year partnership with Netflix to stream Christmas video games – and never simply within the US.
“Once we noticed the viewership from this previous 12 months, actually our followers spoke,” mentioned Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s govt vice-president of media distribution.
“They’re very a lot having fun with and wanting NFL soccer on Christmas. What we have seen the final couple of years is a few unprecedented development, and never simply on Christmas, on Thanksgiving too.”
The NFL’s most-watched regular-season recreation ever was a Thanksgiving recreation in 2022, attracting 42.1 million viewers.
Certainly one of final 12 months’s Christmas video games had 29 million – second solely to the 1989 recreation.
“That chance, that perception we now have that soccer brings folks collectively – that is even more true on these large holidays,” Schroeder added.
The league says they are going to be world sport’s first “actually globally distributed video games”.
Inevitably, cash can be an element. ABC/ESPN pay $2.6bn (£2.1bn) to broadcast about 100 NBA video games every season, together with 5 Christmas video games.
That equates to about $26m per recreation (£21m). To broadcast two NFL video games this Christmas, Netflix has paid a reported $150m (£118m).