Sorry, LeBron: Christmas Day now belongs to the NFL, not the NBA
By Joe Lago
The sound bite was bound to go viral, but LeBron James' claim that "Christmas is our day" was always going to ring untrue. The viewership numbers from the competing slates of the NFL and NBA not surprisingly proved LeBron wrong.
Because as boring as its two lopsided snoozefests were, the NFL still reigned supreme over the NBA on Wednesday by a margin somewhere between the Kansas City Chiefs' 29-10 pummeling of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens' 31-2 rout of the Houston Texans.
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The NBA's five games on Christmas were without question more compelling with late-game drama. However, in the cutthroat competition for TV viewers, style points don't matter.
America will watch the NFL wherever and whenever. Even bad NFL on a streaming service.
With its two uncompetitive Week 17 contests, the NFL still drew 65 million U.S. viewers on Netflix with an average audience of over 24 million for each game, Nielsen announced Thursday. Viewership peaked at 27 million at halftime of Ravens-Texans when Beyoncé performed at halftime.
Netflix NFL Christmas Gameday was a record-breaking day, reaching 65 million US viewers according to Nielsen!
— Netflix (@netflix) December 26, 2024
With an average of more than 24 million people watching each game, Chiefs-Steelers and Ravens-Texans are now the top two most streamed NFL games in US history.… pic.twitter.com/m3CVRv41sq
The NBA enjoyed its most-watched Christmas Day in five years, attracting 5.25 million viewers per game for an increase of 84% from last year's Christmas Day schedule, according to NBA Communications.
The league's old standby — LeBron's Los Angeles Lakers vs. Steph Curry's Golden State Warriors — was the most-watched regular-season contest in five years, too. The Lakers' 115-113 victory, which featured a late flurry of Curry 3-pointers, drew 7.76 million viewers with a peak audience of 8.32 million.
The NBA delivered its most-watched Christmas Day in five years, with viewership up 84% vs. last year across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, Disney+ and ESPN+. The NBA on Christmas Day averaged 5.25 million viewers per game in the U.S.
— NBA Communications (@NBAPR) December 26, 2024
The matchup between the @Lakers and @Warriors – the… pic.twitter.com/VjfjL8XQSU
The NBA getting dunked on by the NFL on its showcase holiday should not be cause for much handwringing by Association brass. The NFL creeping on other sports' sacred territory was inevitable once it recovered from its own ratings decline, and its ambition to have games played on as many days of the week as humanly possible has not resulted in the deadly overexposure that Mark Cuban predicted for the "greedy" league 10 years ago.
NFL is king of American sports, but we knew that already. Sports leagues that are in direct competition, like the NBA, should celebrate its own viewership victories, however small in comparison to the football behemoth, because nothing is challenging the NFL's popularity anytime soon. Everyone is playing for a distant second place.
Wednesday showed where the NFL is headed with the new frontier of streaming, and it reminded the NBA why it needs to be more proactive about planning for life after LeBron and Steph. Both leagues achieved important viewership wins on Christmas. One league, though, was never going to lose.
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