I’m truly bemused that so many so-called experts have devoted so much space leading up to today’s so-called battle for the distracted attention of those unwrapping presents and/or overindulging on eggnog and goose that’s being waged between the NFL and NBA. The WASHINGTON POST’s Ben Golliver tried to set the stage for his readers in his preview from yesterday:
The NBA finally caught a break in its annual Christmas battle with the NFL: Thursday’s holiday slate of football is marred by losing teams, while basketball’s quintuple-header on ABC and ESPN features a deep batch of title contenders.
Four of the six NFL teams set to play on Christmas have already been eliminated from the playoffs, including the big-name Dallas Cowboys and Kansas City Chiefs. To make matters worse, the Chiefs will face the Denver Broncos in the prime-time time slot without three-time Super Bowl champion Patrick Mahomes, who suffered a season-ending knee injury this month.
By contrast, eight of the 10 NBA teams taking the court Thursday have winning records. That group includes the top six teams in the loaded Western Conference plus the New York Knicks, who are fresh off winning the NBA Cup. Remarkably, the last time the top six teams in either conference played on Christmas was 1977.
It’s a “battle” that’s been anticipated since at least August, when OUTKICK’s incendiary Armando Salguero took time out from his usual assignments to attempt to “own the libs”. His banal blather isn’t worth italicizing but it does match the intensity that THE ATHLETIC’s Chris Branch chose to foist upon his readers in this morning’s PULSE newsletter:
I think it’s quite funny that the NFL has clearly been trying to swipe Christmas viewers away from the NBA, the traditional Christmas powerhouse, but comes up penniless here. Just one solid playoff team exists in those three games, and there is little on the line.
But Salguero did at least have one prescient observation:
(A) majority of…people (are) going to watch football over basketball.
On a pure numbers basis, he’s simplistically correct. And yesterday’s e-mail blast from FRONT OFFICE SPORTS’ Colin Salao and David Rumsey backed him up with this man-splain:
The NFL still consistently draws at more than 10 million viewers per game, a figure the NBA only surpasses during the Finals. A prime example is in 2022, when the second of the NFL’s first three-game Christmas slate was between the Rams and Broncos, both of whom were 4–10 entering the holiday. The game still drew 22.6 million viewers on CBS and Nickelodeon, more than any NBA game since the 2017 NBA Finals.
Or they could simply have Googled the post mortem that USA TODAY’s Cydney Henderson dropped exactly one year ago tomorrow:
Netflix’s Christmas Day NFL doubleheader, featuring the Kansas Chiefs’ win over the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens’ blowout of the Houston Texans, brought in an estimated 65 million viewers across the country, the streaming platform announced in a press release, citing Nielsen. The Chiefs-Steelers broadcast attracted an average audience of over 24 million viewers, while the Ravens-Texans broadcast peaked at more than 27 million viewers. (That might be in part due to Beyonce’s halftime performance.) The doubleheader showcased the two “most-streamed NFL games in US history,” Netflix added.
But in the same report, Henderson also reminded her readers that this is anything but a zero sum game:
Despite direct competition from the NFL and a number of basketball stars being injured or absent, the NBA averaged 5.2 million viewers for its most-watched Christmas in five years, the league announced on Thursday. The Lakers’ Christmas Day victory over the Golden State Warriors was the NBA’s crown jewel of the day, attracting an average of 7.7 million viewers who tuned in to watch James and Steph Curry battle it out. Viewership peaked at 8.3 million viewers as Curry singlehandedly led a comeback charge that ultimately fell short. The Lakers-Warriors broadcast marks the league’s most-watched NBA regular season game since 2019. The NBA slate opened with the New York Knicks’ 117-114 win over the San Antonio Spurs, drawing in 4.9M viewers to become the most watched opening Christmas Day game in 13 years. The Phoenix Sun’s 110-100 win over the Denver Nuggets wrapped up the night with an average of 3.8 million viewers, the largest ever for the late Christmas window.
And if one were savvy enough to approach all of this in a manner consistent with how today’s generation of media savants do it–as Salao indeed did a few days after Henderson delivered the top line–they’d notice a few more key points that should qwell those demanding that Adam Silver challenge Roger Goodell to a cage match:
Data provided by Videocites, a social media tracking and analytics company, shows a much smaller gap between the NFL and NBA compared to TV and streaming viewership. The data shows that from Dec. 25 to Dec. 27, the NFL drew 921 million video views, about 14% more than the 811 million views the NBA delivered. The NFL was able to do this despite streaming two games during about a seven-hour run time compared to the NBA, which had its first game tip-off at noon ET with the final game ending around 1 a.m. ET.
However, a deeper look into the Videocites numbers shows slightly more than half of the video views generated by the NFL were based on the 12-minute halftime performance of Beyoncé (464 million). The games themselves generated 457 million video views. The NBA’s run time also allowed for significantly more uploads than the NFL (12,654 vs. 6,112, including the NFL halftime show).
A whopping 90% of major sports audiences (households that watched at least one of four sports — NFL, MLB, NBA or NHL) on LG TVs watch the NFL, while only 45% watch the MLB. NBA fans come in at 27% and NHL fans at 16%.Of those who watch the NFL, 56% also watch the other sports. Most notably 43% can be found watching the MLB. This means that brands looking to target NFL viewers are not limited to ad spots during NFL games or NFL programming – which can be expensive and highly competitive. The same goes for NBA, MLB and NHL audiences.
To recap: one in four viewers on connected TVs are likely to be watching both leagues today, and those watching on devices are even more likely to fall into the “both” of the OOB venn diagrams that those who put their money where their eyeballs are use to determine who the real winners are.
Keep that all in mind before you’re tempted to chime in that maybe the NFL’s next holiday target should be the Fourth Of July.
Courage…