Meantime:

Christmas was on a Monday in 2023, so the NFL played a triple-header that went up against the NBA’s typical five-game slate. Football obliterated basketball, averaging 28.5 million viewers to basketball’s 2.88 million. In fact, Raiders/Chiefs, which pulled 29.2 million, had more than double the viewers of all five NBA games combined. There was a Lakers/Celtics game that did five million for the NBA, but the lowest number for the NFL that day was Ravens/Niners at 27.2 million. The Eagles/Giants game did 29 million.

So here comes the NFL once again. I knew they were gonna do this, didn’t you? They saw the success of 2023 and said, “you know what, we can win any time slot on any day,” even if that day is a Wednesday and on a holiday in which we traditionally do not play, unless it falls into a Sunday or Monday time slot.

Part of me thinks that NFL on a Wednesday is sacrilegious, and amounts to a slippery slope of Tuesday games as well, i.e. where does it stop? Are we playing every day of the week? But then I think to myself, “well, yeah I’d like to watch the NFL on Christmas Day.” I’d rather watch the Colts and Texans than the Mavericks and Suns, and I’m sure there’s a portion of fans out there who think Christmas belongs to the NBA, and that the NFL should respect that, but there’s a much bigger portion of fans who don’t care one bit and will watch NFL at any time, on any day, going up against any competition. The NFL is the big dog and we’re living in a world where they’re going to own any time slot they can fill. You’ll hear people say “there’s too much football,” but that’s not reflected in the ratings.