JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
When you think of what's on TV on December 25, in the U.S., it's usually "A Charlie Brown Christmas," "It's A Wonderful Life" and, of course, professional basketball. The NBA has almost always held games on Christmas Day, and since 2008, it's put five games on national television every year, often with the league's biggest stars. But the NFL has been trying to stand up its own Christmas tradition lately. This year, it's announced two games featuring playoff-caliber teams, both streaming live on Netflix - that's a first - and there will also be performances from Beyonce and Mariah Carey. So is all we want for Christmas really football? Bomani Jones is here to discuss. He's a long-time sports journalist and host of the Wave original podcast, "The Right Time With Bomani Jones." Welcome to the program.
BOMANI JONES, BYLINE: Hey, thanks for having me.
SUMMERS: Let me just start by asking you this. When you were growing up, did you grow up watching NBA basketball as part of, like, your Christmas tradition?
JONES: No, it is as long as I can remember at this point. I couldn't even point to you the beginning of this. But the NBA's real estate had been staked out as Christmas, and that's a big part of the day, at least in my house, particularly - it's always a trick bag because the game that will start around 3:30 or so Eastern is also coinciding a little bit with dinner and trying to figure out how you can angle this to watch, you know, Kobe and Shaq play against each other for the first time at the same time as you eat. But no, that is as close to a traditional outpost as the NBA has ever had, was Christmas Day.
SUMMERS: I mean, the NFL has scheduled some Christmas games off and on historically, and in the last couple of years it's already been two or three Christmas games a year. But this year, Bo, does it feel different to you?
JONES: Well, it's different when they decide to have a Christmas game, and Christmas is on a Wednesday. A big part of why they do Thursday night football and not Wednesday night football is to give players' bodies additional time to recover. And so there are teams that will have played on the Saturday before Christmas who then play on Christmas Day just to make it possible to play on this Wednesday. This is a bold move from the NFL to make a decision that they are going to take every piece of real estate that's left out there that they do not currently own.
SUMMERS: I want to also get into, like, the Netflix of it all. Was it notable to you that it's Netflix that has the right to these Christmas games? It's a streaming service rather than a broadcast network.
JONES: No, it's very notable. Now, Thursday night football now for the NFL is played on Amazon Prime, so they have gone into this space of showing big games on streaming. But with Netflix doing this, it's a little different. It is a new partner, so this is another revenue stream for the NFL. This is Netflix moving into a new territory in having live events. They started by doing this with live comedy specials, and I think it was always with an attempt to build up to having major sporting franchises. The first one they did was Jake Paul and Mike Tyson...
SUMMERS: Right.
JONES: ...Was kind of a dress rehearsal for what they'll be doing on Christmas.
SUMMERS: And it was not exactly a flawless dress rehearsal, I should just note.
JONES: No, it was not a flawless dress rehearsal. There's somebody hard at work at Netflix right now to make sure something like that does not happen again.
SUMMERS: Yeah. Look, I am there for the football, but we can't talk about this without talking about the fact that you've got Beyonce and Mariah Carey performing. Some pretty big names. I mean, Beyonce is a juggernaut. And, of course, some people might remember when Mariah Carey soundtracked the ads for the NBA's Christmas offering. What's the significance there?
JONES: The significance is that is a ruthless move by the NFL. America with football is becoming kind of like Canada with hockey, where there's really one sport, and then these other things that people do every now and then. So to have NFL football on Christmas is a strong play, no matter what. I think the last time they did this, they beat out the NBA in ratings handily because that's what the NFL typically does. It's another thing to not be satisfied with doing that, and getting Mariah Carey to sing the modern Christmas standard - is the right way to put it - this has become her time. And if that wasn't enough, putting Beyonce at halftime? They have just decided they're wiping everybody else off the map in terms of consciousness on Christmas Day if you're trying to provide content.
SUMMERS: I want to talk about the games on Christmas Day a little bit. I mean, these are no slouches. These are not bottom-dwellers playing Christmas football. This year, the NFL has scheduled Kansas City at Pittsburgh and Baltimore at Houston. These are great teams they're angling for the post season. What does that say?
JONES: Well, it's not just that they are great teams, it's that the Steelers are a landmark franchise, right? They have a fan base that is national, that is much different. Patrick Mahomes is quite possibly the best football player that we have ever seen. Lamar Jackson has won two MVPs for the Baltimore Ravens. C.J. Stroud, rising star for the Texans. But I think a big part of that, and I don't know at what point they made this decision, but Beyonce is also from Houston, so if she wanted to go home for Christmas and do your little football game, then that works out well, too.
SUMMERS: Heard. Bomani Jones, long-time sports journalist and the host of the Wave original podcast "The Right Time With Bomani Jones," thanks and happy holidays.
JONES: All right, thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF BEYONCE SONG, "TEXAS HOLD 'EM") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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