Sundays in the fall are reserved for NFL football. So are Monday and Thursday nights. For one Tuesday in December this year, it seemed inevitable that the United States’ most popular sports league would take advantage of a rare opportunity and display a primetime game on a non-traditional weeknight.
That won’t be the case in 2024 though as the NFL confirmed to NBC’s Pro Football Talk that it will not have a game on Christmas Eve this year, which falls on a Tuesday. This comes two weeks after the league announced it will have two games on Christmas Day during the 2024 season, despite Dec. 25 occurring on a Wednesday.
“From what we’ve seen the last couple years is some unprecedented growth, and not just on Christmas, on Thanksgiving, too,” Hans Schroeder, NFL executive vice president of media distribution, said on March 26. “The last couple of years have had the highest-regular season game ever viewed in the regular season. That mindset, that opportunity, that belief we have that football brings people together — that’s even truer on these big holidays that happen throughout the year.”
The NFL staged three games on Christmas last year, a Monday, including a Las Vegas Raiders upset over the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs. The league kept its normal Sunday slate intact on Christmas Eve last year as well, with 10 Week 16 games kicking off on Dec. 24, 2023.
Though rare, there have been 12 NFL games played on a Tuesday and five since 1948. The last time was Dec. 21, 2021, when the NFL held two postponed games on a Tuesday. The Philadelphia Eagles hosted the then-Washington Football Team, while the Seattle Seahawks traveled to Los Angeles to play the Rams. It marked the first time the NFL had two games on the same Tuesday.
Why the NFL shot down a Christmas Eve game
The 2024 NFL season will feature games on six different days of the week with the confirmation of Christmas Day games on a Wednesday. The league will follow up its season kickoff on Sept. 5 with a Friday night game on Sept. 6 when the Eagles and Green Bay Packers meet in Brazil.
Why then did the NFL decide to nix a Tuesday game on Christmas Eve this year? It could simply come down to ratings.
Though the NFL fares well on holidays viewership-wise, recent Christmas Eve games have fallen a bit flat. Over 10.2 million on average tuned into a game between the New England Patriots and Denver Broncos last Dec. 24, per NBC Sports. Just shy of 11 million watched the Raiders and Pittsburgh Steelers a year earlier. Both games were televised on NFL Network.
Another reason could be scheduling and the NFL trying to avoid giving a team any disadvantages during a crucial part of the season. Theoretically, teams could play on Tuesday and the following Sunday or Monday. The NFL saw it best to stay away from that.
NFL fans won’t get a chance to catch a game the night before Christmas in 2024, but at least it’ll prevent some arguments at holiday gatherings across the country.
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