- Christmas Day is usually one of the slowest sports days of the year.
- 2024 will be something of an exception with a greater than average number of games.
- The NBA and NFL will both be active on Christmas Day.
For most of my childhood and teen years there was virtually no sports on television on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. College sports still went with the ‘student/athlete’ charade and hadn’t quite evolved into the cynical moneymaking machine they are now. Pro sports would–with few exceptions–take a few days off.
Over the past few decades, it seems like Christmas Eve has surpassed Christmas Day as the deadest day of the sports betting calendar. This year, however, we’ll even have a few games on December 24. In a separate post, we’ll look at the history of TV sports on Christmas Day. For now, let’s look and who will and won’t be playing:
NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE (NHL)
After a full slate of action on Saturday, December 23 the NHL will actually take a few days off with no games scheduled on the 24th, 25th or 26th. Play will resume on Wednesday, December 27 with another full slate of games.
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION (NBA)
The NBA has made their Christmas Day games a big event over the past few decades and that will continue this year. There will be no games on Christmas Eve but wall to wall action on Christmas Day starting at 12 Noon Eastern/9 AM Pacific:
Milwaukee @ New York
12:00 PM
ESPN
Golden State @ Denver
2:30 PM
ABC
ESPN
Boston @ Los Angeles Lakers
5:00 PM
ABC
ESPN
Philadelphia @ Miami
8:00 PM
ESPN
Dallas @ Phoenix
10:30 PM
ESPN
NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE (NFL)
Since Christmas Eve falls on Sunday and Christmas Day on Monday this year it’ll be business as usual in the NFL with 10 games on December 24 and an all day tripleheader on December 25:
Las Vegas @ Kansas City
1:00 PM
CBS
New York Giants @ Philadelphia Eagles
4:30 PM
FOX
Baltimore @ San Francisco
8:15 PM
ESPN
ABC
COLLEGE BASKETBALL
No games on Christmas Day, but the Hawaiian Airlines Diamondhead Classic will have their final day of action on Christmas Eve. Teams involved are the University of Hawaii, Georgia Tech, Portland, Nevada, Old Dominion, Temple and UMass. The consolation games will be played on ESPN2 with the championship game on ESPN.
COLLEGE FOOTBALL
No bowl games on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, but there’s plenty of action before and after.
SOCCER
There will be one game in the English Premier League as Chelsea plays at Wolverhampton and one game in the Scottish Premiership as Rangers play at Motherwell. There will also be games played in lower tier leagues throughout the world. It’ll then be even slimmer pickings for action on Christmas Day with four games in the Turkish Premier League, one game in Thai League 1 and one game in the Ghanaian Premier League.
