The night of December 24, 2024 marked a milestone in the rivalry between the NFL and the NBA. The NFL’s decision to schedule games in the middle of Christmas Day created direct competition with the NBA’s traditional Christmas programming, triggering a battle for television ratings that left reverberations throughout the sports industry.
Netflix’s NFL Chirstmas Gameday was a success, according to the Nielsen company, Netflix reached 65 million viewers in the United States alone. Preliminary data suggests that the simulcasting of NFL games had a significant impact on NBA ratings in certain key markets. While the NBA has traditionally been dominant on Christmas night, the NFL’s presence in this time slot attracted a sizable portion of the audience, especially among young men. This phenomenon could have long-term implications for both leagues’ television contract negotiations.
The impact of the NFL in Mexico has been incredible, currently millions of Mexicans are very hooked on this sport, we know that it is also popular in countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, and Brazil. During these weeks of playoff games it is still clear to me why American football is such a popular sport. To begin with, it is an extremely spectacular sport, but the level of competition that the league has achieved also helps and, especially, the television broadcasts are simply sensational, the camera direction of these broadcasts is technically almost perfect.
In Mexico this sport has a long tradition. Already in the fifties, a match between the University of Mexico (UNAM) and the National Polytechnic Institute (Politécnico), managed to fill the stadium with a capacity of about 50,000 attendees. But it was not until the seventies when it began to become a popular sport. I remember that in the early seventies the first complete seasons were broadcast. The broadcasts were on Channel 13, owned by the state, where we could watch the Dallas Cowboys games every Sunday, since it was the team that the television station followed.
I remember, in the early seventies, a Conference final between the Dallas Cowboys and the Minnesota Vikings, when a 50-yard pass from Roger Staubach to Drew Person decided the game in the last seconds in favor of Dallas, we were simply electrified. From that year on, the rivalry between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Dallas Cowboys was born for Mexicans, dividing Mexicans for an entire decade.
From my point of view, it is clear why the NFL can crush the NBA in television ratings. While the NFL is a show full of emotions taken to the limit in which not only the players play, but also the coaches and the owners, the NBA has become a game dominated by 3-point shots; it is far from the more physical game that we got used to during the nineties, for example.
The NFL became a perfect league for the whole family. Though one may not agree with the level of consumerism that it fosters, that doesn’t matter! February is coming, it’s Super Bowl month, all you have to do is enjoy it.
