NFL Plans First Christmas Day Triple Header of Games in 2022 Season

The league will have one game on CBS and one on Fox in the afternoon, followed by its regularly scheduled Sunday night game on NBC.

NFL fans, get ready for a football-filled Christmas Day in the 2022 season. Mike North, the league’s vice president of broadcasting, told WGR 550 SportsRadio in Buffalo on Friday that the NFL will have its first triple header on the holiday, which falls on a Sunday this winter.

The league will have one game in the afternoon on CBS, one game in the afternoon on Fox followed by its regularly scheduled Sunday night game on NBC. “Christmas, when it falls on an NFL game day, we’ve had a lot of success there, all due respect to our friends at the NBA,” North told WGR’s Sal Capaccio.

While it marks the NFL’s first triple header on Christmas, a majority of the games throughout the weekend will remain on Dec. 24, including a Christmas Eve night game on NFL Network. 

In talking to Capaccio, North discussed the the success of the Vikings–Saints game in 2020 and the Browns–Packers and Colts–Cardinals games last season.

In 2020, Fox Sports reported that the Vikings–Saints game had 20.1 million viewers on both FOX and NFL Network platforms, making it the most watched Christmas Day telecast of any kind since 2016. 

Looking beyond the 22 campaign, the NFL plans to play two to three games on Christmas Day, which falls on a Monday, in 2023. However, playing games on the holiday in 2024 remains up in the air because Christmas falls on a Wednesday. 

The full 2022 NFL schedule will be announced on Thursday, May 12.

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