The NFL is officially planning to take over Christmas in 2025 by holding a tripleheader on Thursday, Dec. 25. The league has historically avoided scheduling any games when Christmas has fallen on a Thursday — it has NEVER held a Thursday game on Christmas — but over the past few years, the NFL has fully embraced the holiday, which is why a tripleheader is happening, CBS Sports NFL insider Jonathan Jones confirms.
After the league decided to play on Christmas last season, when the holiday was on a Wednesday, it became pretty clear that the NFL was going to start playing on Christmas every year no matter what day the holiday happened to fall on.
The three games for 2025 will be going to Netflix and Amazon, Adam Schefter reported Tuesday. Since Christmas is on a Thursday, Amazon will be getting its standard Thursday night game while Netflix will be handling the other two games as part of a three-year deal that it signed with the NFL in 2024.
If the NFL sticks to the same Christmas tripleheader schedule that it’s had in the past, then the games will be staggered throughout the day with kickoff times at 1 p.m. ET, 4:30 p.m. ET and 8:20 p.m. ET.
The NFL has scheduled a total of eight Christmas games over the past three years — three in 2022, three in 2023 and two in 2024 — and they all registered huge ratings. The two Christmas games from last season both had more than 24 million viewers on Netflix, which is a big number for games that were only available through streaming.
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John Breech
The NFL has been playing regular-season games on Christmas since 1989, and in the 35 years since then, the league has been looking to utilize the holiday whenever possible. In 2004, the NFL played its first Christmas doubleheader ever, and now, 21 years later, we’re getting our first Thursday Christmas game ever.
The teams playing in the Christmas games will be revealed in May when the NFL schedule is released.
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