Sport will take a break around much of the world this Christmas, just as it does every year.
But not even Christmas Day can halt the fixture list in the United States.
American families are used to watching sport together on the Thanksgiving holiday, on the fourth Thursday in November.
Then a month later they do it all again. It is as much a part of the holidays as turkey dinners.
This year, though, the NFL says that a “new global holiday tradition” will begin, featuring Beyonce and Mariah Carey.
NFL at Thanksgiving, NBA at Christmas
Christmas Day sport had initially been an English tradition, with Football League games attracting huge crowds from 1889 before dwindling interest led to the final game in 1965.
An increase in television sets was partly responsible, but TV helped basketball become a festive staple in the US.
The NBA first played at Christmas in 1947, during the league’s second season, and right from the start games have been televised.
Christmas Day has become the most-watched day of the NBA’s regular season, with 2011 its best year, when the five games averaged 6.3 million viewers.
Multiple Christmas games have been played each season so there have been 277 NBA games played on 25 December.
Traditionally, basketball had Christmas all to itself, while Thanksgiving was American football’s day. Not any more.
Why has NFL moved into Christmas market?
The NFL has played Thanksgiving games since its first season in 1920 but in 1971 it gave Christmas a go with two play-off games.
The latter went into double overtime. It ended up being the longest game in NFL history at 82 minutes and 40 seconds.
Reportedly, there were complaints as it caused havoc with dinner being served, so the NFL avoided scheduling another Christmas game until 1989.
This time they had a 9pm kick-off and it proved a big hit. With a TV audience of 33 million, it remains the most-watched Christmas game ever.
Christmas no longer belonged to just the NBA. After 1989, if 25 December fell on a weekend, there would be at least one NFL game.
Since 2020, there have been NFL games each Christmas, even when 25 December has fallen midweek.
The NFL has only played 30 games on Christmas Day, but all of them have attracted bigger TV audiences than the NBA – and the gap is getting bigger.
Over the past four years, the average Christmas audience for an NBA game has dropped from 4.5 million to a record low of 2.9 million last year. For the NFL, it has increased from 20.9 million to 28.7 million.
