How many days of the week are you willing to give the NFL?
· Yahoo Sports
The NFL is testing you. Season by season, day by day, the NFL is seeing just how much you’re willing to give, and give up, to follow The Shield.
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I’m not talking about money, although the NFL is testing the limits of that, too, posting more games on more streaming services with ever-escalating subscription fees.
The NFL is now testing just how much time you’re willing to surrender. Ready to devote your Wednesdays to the league, too? You’d better be. It’s coming.
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You — and by “you,” I mean you, me, all of us football freaks — have proven you’re willing to watch football on Sunday mornings, afternoons and evenings, plus Thursday nights and Monday nights. You’ll get up early for the Europe games, you’ll follow the NFL onto Saturdays after college football is done, you’ll surrender your entire Thanksgiving Day and a good chunk of Christmas, too.
Every single time the NFL breaks into new territory on the calendar, eight figures’ worth of NFL fans follow. Consider a few stats from the 2025 season:
The Chiefs-Cowboys game on Thanksgiving drew 57.23 million viewers, the most-watched regular-season game in NFL history.
On Christmas Day, Lions-Vikings drew an estimated 27.5 million viewers, Cowboys-Commanders drew 19.9 million, impressive when you consider both were on Netflix. Broncos-Chiefs drew 21.1 million on Prime despite the absence of Patrick Mahomes.
The NFL even gets Americans out of bed early on Sunday mornings; the International Series games posted a record average of 6.2 million viewers in 2025 despite kickoffs that are literally before sunrise on the West Coast.
Christmas Day in particular is notable because of the way the NFL absolutely muscled the NBA right off its traditional corner. While the NBA enjoyed its best Christmas Day numbers in 15 years last year, the five individual games averaged 5.5 million viewers each … or roughly a quarter of the NFL’s numbers.
Charles Barkley spent Christmas raging in impotent frustration at the NFL’s march. “The NFL got greedy and started adding Christmas games," Barkley said on Inside the NBA. “We used to have this day to ourselves, but Roger Goodell, and them pigs at the NFL always want to hog every day of the week now. Christmas is an NBA day.”
Not anymore. For most of America, the NBA is what you turn to on Christmas when the NFL’s not on, and Thanksgiving dinners get scheduled around key kickoffs.
Barkley’s indignant Christmas Day phrasing referenced that famous, instant-classic line from Mark Cuban about the NFL’s greedy expansionism: “Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.” It’s a catchy line, and it surely plays well in business schools and consultants’ strategic proposals.
“When you try to take it too far,” added Cuban, the former owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, “people turn the other way. I’m just telling you, when you’ve got a good thing and you get greedy, it always, always, always, always, always turns on you. That’s Rule No. 1 of business.”
Seems like a valid rule … right up until you realize Cuban said that all the way back in 2014, multiple troughs ago. Whatever rules apply to other sports, other businesses, the NFL steps right over — or just devours — them.
Need proof? The NFL is now starting to break the seal on Wednesday night games. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the league is likely to begin the 2026 season on a Wednesday night, due in part to the logistics of an early-season Rams-49ers game in Australia. That’s on brand for the NFL: Why break new ground in just one direction (geographically) when you can break it in two directions (days of the week)?
Once you get people accustomed to turning in on Wednesdays during the season, why not go for the biggest Wednesday of them all, the one right before Thanksgiving? It’s just sitting there untouched, right? Sure, Thanksgiving night reunions might have to get wrapped up before kickoff, or wait until halftime. But so what? There’s football to be watched!
Think further down the line. The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 prevents the NFL from playing during early-season Fridays and Saturdays, but it’s as quaint as leather helmets. When the NFL and its media partners eventually decide to lobby on “updating” that act, expect it to evaporate like breath at a December Lambeau Field night game.
Ten years from now, it’s not just possible, it’s likely we’ll have NFL regular season games on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday and Monday nights, with Saturdays added in as soon as college football wraps up. Is that too much football for you? Is there such a thing as too much football for you? When every day features NFL football, when do you have a moment to watch anything but NFL football?
At least there’s Tuesday. For now.