Who Really Won Christmas Day? The NBA, NFL, or Netflix?
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What’s up, everyone? I know, I know. It’s Christmas week. Call me the Grinch or whatever you want. I hope you are enjoying time with your family and not checking your email. But just in case you are, let’s discuss the NBA-NFL ratings debate.
A holiday historically dominated by the NBA, Christmas Day has become an intense rivalry between America’s two most profitable sports leagues. The NFL held two games this year, while the NBA held five. LeBron James went viral for saying the NBA still owns Christmas Day, but what do the numbers say? Some context is needed.
Let’s start with the NBA. For the last several weeks, everyone has been discussing why league-wide viewership is down twenty percent from 2023 and forty percent over the last decade. Some say analytics has made the product boring because it eliminated the mid-range shot, turning every game into a three-point shootout. Others might talk about how load management and poor officiating have made the league unwatchable.
But much of this is just noise. The NBA is fine. Its five games on Christmas Day averaged 5.25 million viewers, an 84% jump from 2023. The noon game was up 98%, the 8 p.m. game was up 499%, and the 10:30 p.m. game was up 161%. This was the NBA’s most-watched Christmas Day in five years, and viewership is now essentially flat year over year despite everyone acting like the NBA was going out of business.
The NBA is bragging about these Christmas Day numbers because they are good numbers. But you don’t subscribe to this newsletter for PR talking points. The truth is that the NBA had a few things working in its favor this holiday season.
For starters, the NBA aired all its games on ABC this year rather than on ESPN. That inherently juices the year-over-year comparisons, given the distribution differences between broadcast and cable television. The NBA also benefitted from the NFL putting its games on a streaming service, as poor discoverability (and subscription paywalls) still make television the best medium for large-scale audiences. And that’s without even mentioning the most significant benefit — the NFL only held two games on Christmas Day, unlike the triple-header they had in 2022 and 2023. So, while the 8 pm game between the Lakers and Warriors was fantastic, it only jumped from 1.3 million viewers in 2023 to 7.7 million this year because there was no NFL competition.
I don’t tell you this to rain on the NBA’s parade. It was wise to put this year’s games on ABC, and it’s not the NBA’s fault that the NFL chose money over distribution.
Speaking of the NFL, this was still an excellent outcome. The NFL knew moving games from Fox or CBS to Netflix could result in lower viewership. However, dropping from a per-game average viewership of 28.4 million in 2023 to 24.2 million in 2024 is a better outcome than many would have expected given the circumstances.
The NBA had five games with an average audience of 5.25 million viewers, while the NFL had two games with an average audience of 24.2 million. That means one NFL game had almost as many viewers (24 million) as all five NBA games combined (26 million) despite the NBA being on broadcast television and the NFL being on Netflix.
The NFL received $150 million from Netflix, significantly more than the cable networks would have paid for the same two games. And it also served as a good test of whether the NFL should include Netflix when renegotiating its next media rights deal.
So if the NBA and NFL are both happy with the outcome, the loser has to be Netflix, right? Well, not exactly. Despite two boring games, which, objectively speaking, were much less competitive than the NBA’s 5-game Christmas Day slate, Nielsen says Netflix’s NFL games still reached 65 million total viewers in the United States.
Netflix quickly started circulating its talking points. Before the second game even began, Netflix released a press release stating that nearly one-third of all active Netflix viewers at the time were watching the Chiefs vs. Steelers game and that the company’s first NFL game had attracted viewers from 200+ countries worldwide.
Even if we disregard the fact that the United Nations only recognizes 195 countries, these are vanity metrics. The 1/3 of all concurrent viewers on Netflix watching the Chiefs vs. Steelers game stat is meaningless without knowing how many viewers were actually on Netflix at the time, and saying the game attracted viewers from more than 200 countries just means that at least one person in each country tuned in to the game.
Netflix didn’t have to do this. The stats themselves were impressive enough. These two NFL games ended up being the most-streamed NFL games in US history, beating the 23 million viewers that Peacock got for its exclusive NFL playoff game last year, a number that also included local market TV viewership in Kansas City and Miami.
This has left me with several takeaways:
Netflix is doing a great job executing its live sports strategy. Netflix still doesn’t want to broadcast random MLB or NBA games on a Tuesday night, but its intent focus on premium events is paying off. These events are perfect for Netflix because they guarantee millions of viewers. They are also a helpful customer acquisition and retention tool — Paramount+ added 3.4 million new subs during last year’s Super Bowl — and commercials are already baked into the sports viewing experience, allowing Netflix to show advertisements to lower and higher-paying subscription tiers. This is why they paid $5 billion for the WWE’s Monday Night Raw and another $150 million for two NFL games on Christmas Day.
The NBA will be fine. Don’t get me wrong; there is a laundry list of things the NBA could do to improve its product, but that sentiment applies to every sports league globally. The reality is that the NBA has firmly placed itself as America’s third most popular sports league, behind only the NFL and college football, if we want to count that. Stars like LeBron James and Stephen Curry still move the needle more than anyone else, but the NBA is a global game, unlike the NFL, and they bring in billions in annual revenue from countries like China. TV executives weren’t worried about the NBA’s early-season ratings after handing the league an 11-year, $76 billion media rights deal because these things usually correct themselves over time, especially if you put more games on broadcast television.
The NFL is a juggernaut. If the NBA is signing $76 billion media rights deals, what is the NFL worth? It feels inevitable at this point that the NFL will opt out of its media rights deal in 2030. They will probably expand the season to 18 regular season games and renegotiate another $100 billion-plus TV rights deal, taking one last bite out of the apple before streaming officially becomes more popular than cable. Many people are upset that the NFL continues to add more broadcast partners, and Netflix had a few hiccups during the broadcast. However, Netflix’s streaming tech performed much better than it did during the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight, presumably because Netflix hired current NFL partner CBS to produce the broadcast. Netflix also made this feel like an elevated event by hiring Beyonce to do a Super Bowl-esque halftime show in Houston. None of the NFL’s current partners would have even attempted that, and it speaks to how Netflix’s real value might be elevating a few special events for the NFL each season. Christmas Day falls on a Thursday next year, so expect another triple header — two games on Netflix during the day and another on Amazon at night.
Ultimately, my biggest takeaway is simple: While everyone is contorting viewership numbers to fit the narrative they have already predetermined in their head, data often doesn’t tell the entire story. The NBA suddenly looks healthy again after simply switching a few games from cable to broadcast TV, and while the NFL’s numbers are technically down 15% from 2023, the Netflix deal is more of a look into the future.
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ANNOUNCEMENT: After some people had trouble signing up for a premium subscription last week, I have extended the 50% discount another 24 hours. This is our largest discount ever and our only sale of the year, so sign up today to receive all premium membership benefits, including 12x monthly deep dives, a library of 500+ articles, direct access to me via email, and an invitation to a subscriber-only chat where we share articles and talk about what’s happening in sports business.