Original Article: Front Office Sports, by Mike McCarthy, March 28th, 2024

The NFL is planning a lucrative Christmas present—to itself.

The league is poised to auction off TV rights to its two new Christmas Day games for the 2024 season, say sources with direct knowledge of the strategy, with bidding likely to start in the $50 million range.

The league plans to open the bidding to all of its media partners, say sources, including CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN-ABC, and Amazon Prime Video. Collectively, these media giants will pay the NFL $110 billion through 2033.

The games are more likely to appear on linear TV networks than streaming platforms, the sources say.

The NFL declined to comment.

There’s no league better than the NFL at slicing and dicing up rights to find new revenue streams. Prime paid the league $100 million for exclusive streaming rights to the league’s first Black Friday game between the Jets and Dolphins last fall. The tech giant will now pay an estimated $120 million for the rights to its first playoff game this season. NBCUniversal’s Peacock, meanwhile, paid $110 million for streaming rights to the Chiefs-Dolphins wildcard playoff win last season.

Andrew Brandt, the former Packers executive turned consultant, estimates the Christmas Day games could end up selling for a 20% to 25% increase over the Black Friday game, which averaged 9.61 million viewers.

The NFL typically “exceeds expectations” when it comes to media deals, notes John Kosner, the former ESPN executive. He thinks the new Christmas Day games could sell for $75 million to $100 million apiece.

“The premium prices have come for exclusive streaming rights to NFL playoff games,” Kosner says. “NFL Christmas Day/night games have huge and growing audiences—but they are regular-season games scheduled seven months in advance. And traditionally the ad market for Christmas Day is not as robust.”

The NFL’s Christmas Day tripleheader in 2023 generated record TV audiences last season. CBS drew an average of 29.6 million viewers for an early-afternoon game between the Chiefs and Raiders. Fox drew 29 million for its lateafternoon broadcast of Giants-Eagles, and ESPN pulled 27.1 million for a prime-time Ravens-49ers game. Those figures dwarfed the average audience of 2.86 million for the NBA’s five competing Christmas Day games.

The NFL previously said its teams would not be in action this Christmas due to the holiday falling on a Wednesday. But the nation’s richest, most powerful sports league doesn’t like to leave money on the table. Besides generating more media-rights revenue, the NFL’s Christmas Day doubleheader will serve as another shot across the bow of the NBA, which dominated TV sports on the holiday for decades.

On his podcast, Colin Cowherd said the NFL is trying to effectively take Christmas Day away from the NBA as a tentpole TV event. “The gloves are off. It feels to me like the NFL has said, ‘We’re going to squeeze you,’” said Cowherd. “I do believe that’s a tipping point. That Christmas Day mattered a lot to the NBA. Those NFL games put a blanket over it.”

On Tuesday, NFL reporter Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated’s MMQB noted that the league would put the new Christmas games up for bid among the networks.