Christmas is supposed to be about family, friends, and warm drinks not juggling streaming apps just to watch a bunch of half alive football teams. Yet that is exactly what the NFL has decided to gift fans this year. The league has been slowly turning Christmas Day into a football marathon, but this season it has gone all in. Three games will air on Christmas Day, two on Netflix and one on Amazon Prime. In other words, if you do not have multiple subscriptions, your holiday football plans are already ruined.
At the start of the season, the matchups looked delicious. Commanders vs Cowboys, Vikings vs Lions, and Chiefs vs Broncos sounded like must watch TV. All six teams began the 2025 season with playoff dreams. Fast forward to late December, and only Detroit and Denver are still breathing in the playoff race. The rest are basically showing up for a paycheck and some holiday snacks. As one frustrated fan perfectly summed it up,
I’m sure the ratings will be fine, because it’s football.
— Dave Helman (@davehelman_) December 22, 2025
but, man. 3rd string QBs and next to no playoff stakes. all-time bad beat of a Christmas schedule. pic.twitter.com/Tw9tCZF6do
That pretty much captures the vibe of this year’s so called Christmas spectacle.
Fans are not just mad about boring matchups. They are also tired of the NFL pushing games onto every possible holiday and forcing viewers to jump through streaming hoops. For years, Thanksgiving was football’s sacred holiday. Now Christmas has been hijacked too, and not everyone is in the festive mood about it. On social media, thousands of fans have announced that they are boycotting the games entirely. One fan wrote that they are not watching NFL games on Christmas Day. Another said Thanksgiving was already enough football for one holiday. Others made it clear they would rather watch basketball or spend time with family than deal with what they called trash games.
The irony is that the NFL believes this strategy will grow the sport by putting games on giant platforms like Netflix and Amazon. In reality, it might just be annoying the loyal fans who made the league so powerful in the first place. People do not want to spend Christmas explaining to their relatives how to log into three different apps just to watch a quarterback nobody has heard of throw passes that do not matter for the playoffs.
Sure, the ratings will probably still be solid, because football in America is practically a religion. But even religions have holidays, and fans are starting to feel like the NFL is crashing the party uninvited. When the games have little drama and even less playoff impact, it makes the whole thing feel like a lazy cash grab wrapped in holiday paper.
So this Christmas, the NFL might technically win the ratings battle, but it is definitely losing some goodwill along the way. For many fans, the choice is simple. Family, food, and fun first. Mediocre football on two streaming services can wait.
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