Roger Goodell says NFL intends to compete with NBA with three Christmas Day games

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell made it abundantly clear that he plans to take on the NBA on their biggest holiday: Christmas.

Goodell spoke to the Pat McAfee Show on Friday, and said the league plans to have three games on Christmas Day this season, putting them in direct competition with the NBA for the eyes of sports fans on a day when many are at home watching TV with their families.

“We will clearly have three games every year,” Goodell said, per Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic.

The NFL started this push into the NBA's turf last season, when they scheduled three Wednesday games on Christmas Day, the first time games had been scheduled on that day of the week since 1925.

The NBA has staked a claim to that day since 1947, but it has become more of a marquee event in the last 20 years. The league puts some of its best matchups on the calendar, enticing fans with a plethora of tasty pairings.

But, the NFL's gravitational pull is hard to ignore. They are the two-ton gorilla of the sports world, and can more or less go where they want and claim what they want on the calendar, and no one can do anything about it. They are a constant ratings juggernaut, and that seems likely to continue for the forseeable future.

It's unclear if the NFL planting a flag on Christmas would force the NBA to move off of a day they've held for so long. Adam Silver has said he welcomes Christmas competition, but saying it, and acting on it are two different things, and it's unclear if a potential ratings dent from the NFL playing in the same time windows for a prolonged period would change his tune.

Silver has talked about shifting games to Christmas Eve, but doing so would concede the day to the NFL fully, something he may not want to do.

Ultimately, the NFL's push into Christmas has created a complicated scenario for Sliver and the NBA, who don't have an easy answer for how to compete yet.

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