NFL vs NBA TV Ratings: Who had the highest viewership on Christmas day?
NBA Christmas viewership increased from last year, but the 2022 basketball figures still paled in comparison to those that watched the NFL holiday games.
Football and basketball will have to learn to share Christmas Day. It was the first time for the NFL to feature a triple header, and since Christmas fell on a Sunday, the matchups came up against the customary five-game offering by the NBA.
Packers bring them in
The football numbers outstripped the basketball figures by far. The Green Bay Packers’ victory over the Miami Dolphins was watched by almost 26 million, which went down as the eighth-highest figure of the current NFL season, and the second-highest ever on Christmas Day.
The Los Angeles Rams’ thrashing of the Denver Broncos had the second-highest viewership of the day, with 21.67 million, while 17.15 million people tuned in to watch the Tampa Bay Buccaneers prevail over the Arizona Cardinals.
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The numbers registered by the NBA seem paltry in comparison, with the highest rating recorded by the Milwaukee Bucks-Boston Celtics game at a little over six million. The lowest-rating game among the five was the one between the Phoenix Suns and the Denver Nuggets, which garnered 2.5 million viewers.
NBA not worried
But the discrepancy between the two leagues in terms of viewership is not necessarily a cause for concern for the NBA. Even though the audience for the Packers-Dolphins game alone was bigger than that of all five Christmas Day basketball games combined, the average number for the NBA matches (4.31 million) was still a 5% increase from last year’s average of 4.08 million.
Here are the viewership numbers for the 2022 Christmas Day games.
NFL
- Packers-Dolphins: 25.92 million
- Broncos-Rams: 21.67 million
- Buccaneers-Cardinals: 17.15 million
NBA
- Bucks-Celtics: 6.08 million
- Grizzlies-Warriors: 4.75 million
- Lakers-Mavs: 4.38 million
- Sixers-Knicks: 4.07 million
- Suns-Nuggets: 2.52 million