Thanksgiving and the NFL are strongly linked together and watching football on this holiday has become an American tradition.
Each year the league holds three games and they’re all considered to be primetime games as the viewership in Thanksgiving is through the roof.
Despite there not being an official contract or agreement between the NFL and the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys, these two teams play each year on Thanksgiving since many decades ago, with the Lions nearing almost a century of playing during the holiday.
Why do the Lions and Cowboys always play on Thanksgiving?
Having NFL games played on Thanksgiving is something that the league owes to the Detroit Lions, who started the tradition in 1934, after their owner George A. Richards wanted to attract more fans and the stadium begun being sold out for the holiday game ever since, proving to be a genius marketing move.
Despite other teams having played before on Thanksgiving, Detroit managed to cement their tradition given that the team also had secured a network deal with NBC to broadcast this game across almost one hundred stations in the United States.
The Cowboys started playing regularly on Thanksgiving in 1966 in a move to get more national publicity, setting record breaking crowds for their games in the following years, the only two years they haven’t played on Thanksgiving since that year was in 1975 and 1977.
The only NFL team yet to play on a Thanksgiving game is the Jacksonville Jaguars, who’ve never been scheduled for this holiday prime time slate.
What NFL games will we see on Thanksgiving Day 2025?
- Green Bay Packers vs Detroit Lions
- Kansas City Chiefs vs Dallas Cowboys
- Cincinnati Bengals vs Baltimore Ravens
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