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I don’t want to offend anyone, but are we sure this doesn’t exist? too much football?
On Wednesday, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that the NFL was “considering” adding a game the day before Thanksgiving to its annual schedule, perhaps as early as the 2026 season. Of course, the NFL doesn’t do much “considering” these days. The league does it.
And given that the NFL is buying four more games from (probably) a streamer, it’s safe to expect a game on Thanksgiving Eve as early as this season.
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Micah Parsons #1 of the Green Bay Packers bites turkey leg after the game against the Detroit Lions at Ford Field on November 27, 2025 in Detroit, Michigan. (Nic Antaya/Getty Images)
As for the league’s motivation, Netflix currently pays the NFL $75 million per game for its Christmas Day doubleheaders. Exclusively showing a game the day before Thanksgiving could cost the same amount.
With a market capitalization close to $4 trillion, YouTube’s parent company, Alphabet, is in a position to outbid its potential competitors. Christian Oestlien, YouTube’s vice president of subscriptions, also recently expressed interest in adding more NFL games to the platform.
“We want YouTube to be a core part of their media distribution,” Oestlien told The Athletic.
As a reminder, the Wednesday night game is expected to air in addition to the rest of the Thanksgiving and Black Friday slate.
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Here’s a look at the potential 10-day stretch of football in November:
- Saturday: Complete College Football Slate
- Sunday: Full NFL slate
- Monday: Monday Night Football
- Tuesday: MACtion Wednesday: NFL game
- Thanksgiving: NFL games
- Black Friday: NFL game
- Saturday: College Football Rivalry Week
- Sunday: Full NFL slate
- Monday: Monday Night Football
Even if you don’t count college football games, that’s a lot of football. It also follows a familiar pattern of further diluting the NFL product, whose popularity was once tied to its scarcity.
Thanksgiving football is a tradition, although it’s less exciting to wake up that morning to watch the first games of the new week if there was already a game the day before. Likewise, NFL RedZone has gained cultural appeal as a way to simultaneously follow a series of intriguing Sunday games. However, on the first Sunday after Thanksgiving, 10 teams will have already played.
Dallas Cowboys wide receiver George Pickens (3) celebrates by eating turkey after the game against the Kansas City Chiefs at AT&T Stadium on November 27, 2025. (Kevin Jairaj/Imagn Images)
Additionally, there would still be three nationally televised games between Sunday afternoon (which is national for most of the country), Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football.
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And there simply aren’t enough good and interesting teams to expand the domestic calendar on such a scale.
Last year, only one of the teams attending Thanksgiving reached the playoffs, the Packers. The other five did not: the Chiefs, Cowboys, Bengals, Ravens and Lions.
The much-vaunted Christmas Day list was worse. Cowboys vs. Commanders featured two teams already eliminated from the playoffs. The Chiefs vs. Broncos featured a Patrick Mahomes-less Kansas City team that had also already been eliminated from the playoffs. The Lions vs. Vikings featured two non-playoff teams in a 23-10 game with Max Brosmer as Minnesota’s quarterback.
“But Bobby, don’t watch it if you don’t like it. Go watch a true crime documentary“, an X user is about to ask.
Look, maybe I will. However, most of you won’t. And no one is pretending that Americans won’t watch the extra games on television.
Yet at some point, the proliferation of poorly played games on national television, combined with a dearth of exciting Sunday games, will push viewers to one day, wait, skip a game or two.
The league is also not as invincible as it claims to be.
Jordan Love #10 of the Green Bay Packers bites a turkey leg after the game against the Detroit Lions at Ford Field on November 27, 2025 in Detroit, Michigan. (Nic Antaya/Getty Images)
Last season was not the victory the league touts. The NFL claims a 10% year-over-year viewership increase, which is the second-highest viewership average since tracking began in 1988. But that’s not entirely true.
The TV industry estimates that since Nielsen changed its tracking methodology to Big Data + Panel last August, ratings for live sporting events have increased by about 8%. The 2025 regular season therefore did not see a true double-digit increase.
Applying the same logic, the Super Bowl drop was probably closer to 7-10% than 2%.
These are not dramatic collapses. Yet the idea that the NFL continues to grow in popularity year after year, regardless of its scheduling decisions, is misleading.
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Call me all the names you want. We don’t need football matches on Wednesdays and Fridays, early Sunday mornings in Europe, and probably somehow on Tuesdays.
We also shouldn’t need six to seven different services/channels to watch games, as the expansion of Thanksgiving week football would require.
