If you're wondering why the National Football League is smiling from ear to ear these days, the league is fresh off of a holiday experiment marked by dazzling results and an exciting new streaming partner who is likely to join the queue for future bidding wars.
That's too bad.
The NFL trotted out two more Christmas Day games on the 2024 regular-season calendar—something it began to try out in 2022—with a doubleheader featuring the Kansas City Chiefs visiting the Pittsburgh Steelers on the front end. The primary issue this time around was the day and time—namely that Christmas fell on a Wednesday this year.
Instead of avoiding the idea of a mid-week game, the NFL decided to capitulate, of course. Thus, the Chiefs and Steelers were forced to play three games in an 11-day span, including a mainstream showing on only four days of rest deep into the calendar.
No one should be encouraging the NFL in these directions.
A total of 65 million viewers watched the league's two offerings on Christmas Day. “We’re thrilled with our first Christmas Gameday on Netflix with NFL games being streamed to a global audience,” said Hans Schroeder, NFL executive vice president of media distribution, via a press release.
“Fans in all 50 states and over 200 countries around the world watched some of the league’s brightest stars along with a dazzling performance by Beyoncé in a historic day for the NFL.”
With a half-hearted "Congratulations!" to the franchises and decision-makers involved, let's also be clear to communicate this: "That's too bad."
In a league that likes to levy irrational punishments that fail any test for consistency or accountability i the name of player safety, the NFL has no problem putting safety on the chopping block when they're courting a new broadcast partner. That only further enables the NFL in times like this. to stream games this year and next, and if the results are strong, they will surely be back for more in 2026.
The problem is that those tasked with doing the actual entertaining are the ones forced to interrupt their routines to actually, y'know, heal up from the previous week. The game of American football is already a very physical one. Every week, elite athletes are lost for long periods due to torn ligaments, broken bones, concussions, et al. Those numbers only get worse when broadcast schedules interrupt a team's ability to provide proper training and rest between appearances.
The risky play by the NFL this week was for the teams involved to suffer one or more catastrophic injuries. If that had happened, the ongoing conversation would have turned to just how unfair—and even inhumane—these schedule demands are. Instead, the teams involved came away fairly clean and no one is talking about the risk on the other side. That only further enables the NFL in times like this.
No one wanted to see an injury take place, but it's also frustrating to watch the league get away with laying out such a schedule and withstanding any and all criticism—if they get any at all. The NFL rolled the dice by taking Netflix's money and there was no lesson to be learned with itt. That only emboldens future moves that are likely to put player safety even further down the list of priorities.