A jam-packed day of sports on Christmas turned out to be a huge ratings success for both the NFL and NBA.
The NFL easily won the day with an average of 22.9 million viewers for all three games, including a streaming-record 27.5 million watching the Detroit Lions-Minnesota Vikings game on Netflix.
The NBA’s quintuple-header drew more than 47 million total viewers across all five games, including a peak of 6.7 million watching the San Antonio Spurs defeat the Oklahoma City Thunder.
One area where the NBA did claim victory over the NFL was social media. The league touted its 1.6 billion views across all platforms as the most of any brand on Christmas Day.
This marks the second consecutive year that the NFL has held a Christmas Day doubleheader on Netflix. The 2024 games featuring the Kansas City Chiefs vs. Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens vs. Houston Texans averaged 26.5 million viewers.
The schedule set up this year for the NFL to have a tripleheader since Christmas Day fell on Thursday, which already has a Prime Video game in the evening.
Even though the Prime Video game between the Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs lost some luster with Patrick Mahomes out due to a torn ACL and the Chiefs out of playoff contention, it still set a Thursday Night streaming record with an average of 21.1 million viewers.
The first three NBA games averaged more than 6 million viewers. For comparison, the Los Angeles Lakers’ win over the Golden State Warriors was the only Christmas Day game in 2024 to average at least 6 million viewers.
The Lakers game against the Houston Rockets this year was only the fourth-most watched NBA matchup of the day (5.4 million viewers). It was the first game of the season between LeBron James and Kevin Durant.
It certainly didn’t help the viewership for the game that Houston built an early lead and stretched it to 23 points midway through the third quarter. The Broncos-Chiefs game that was going on at the same time was surprisingly competitive even though Kansas City was down to third-string quarterback Chris Oladokun as its starter.
Denver escaped Arrowhead Stadium with a 20-13 win thanks to RJ Harvey’s go-ahead touchdown with 1:45 remaining in the fourth quarter.
Any concerns that the NFL putting more games on Christmas Day would lead to issues for the NBA have proven to be unwarranted. The head-to-head scheduling on Dec. 25 will continue for at least one more year since the NFL’s current contract with Netflix, which includes a deal for at least one Christmas game, runs through 2026.