With two major musical performances and the playoffs on horizon, leave it to the NFL to find itself dealing with a controversy in the midst of unbridled enthusiasm for the sport. Back in November, the league announced Beyoncé would be performing during its Christmas Day game between the Houston Texans and Baltimore Ravens. Then, her husband and NFL partner, Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter was hit with a civil lawsuit claiming he sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl in 2000 alongside disgraced music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs. Carter vehemently denied the claims just minutes after his name was publicly implicated, but many wondered if the NFL would distance themselves from the Roc Nation founder.
During a meeting with league leaders in Irving, Texas earlier this month, commissioner Roger Goodell was asked about the lawsuit and whether it would affect the NFL’s relationship with Carter. “From our standpoint, our relationship is not changing with them, including our preparations for the next Super Bowl,” Goodell told reporters.
In short: the NFL is moving ahead with its plan to turn Christmas Day into another annual tradition for football fans, and they’re banking on Beyoncé to help them do it.
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A holiday truce once existed on Christmas between the major sports leagues. Thanksgiving was — and technically still is — linked to the NFL. Meanwhile, December 25 has long been viewed as the unofficial start of the NBA season (though it tips off in October). In the past, some of the NBA’s biggest stars, rivalries, sneakers and storylines have played out on Christmas Day as gifts were unwrapped and dinner was devoured. The NBA’s presence on the holiday dates back to the league’s infancy in 1947.
Now it appears that if the truce isn’t broken, it’s at the very least extremely strained.
Last year, the NFL rolled out a three-game slate across three different networks on Christmas, garnering some of the highest TV ratings of the season. Based on viewership statistics, the NBA’s five-game offering saw a 6-1 margin deficit against their gridiron competition. So how can Commissioner Adam Silver keep the NFL from gobbling up the NBA’s signature day?
“I think we need to seriously consider starting [the season]on Christmas because, listen, you’re wasting your time going up against the NFL and college football. They own the weekends now,” NBA and broadcasting legend Charles Barkley told the Dan Patrick Show. “We’d have the entire calendar to [ourselves].”
Others feel the NBA will need to be more like the NFL and turn Christmas games into a spectacle.
“I imagine the NBA is going to have to attract viewers on Christmas Day by acquiring headlining talent comparable to Beyoncé or maybe changing the format of the day’s programming,” said Dr. Brittany Proctor-Habil, assistant professor of race and media at The New School. “Televising NBA [games]from noon to 10:30 PM ET is not as appealing to viewers as it once was.”
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The NFL is America’s preeminent sports league. One that is just as entrenched on Sundays as church — and that’s just one of many days where its flags have been planted recently. But by late December, despite scheduling improprieties, the NFL is further along in its season. The emotional investment is already at a fever pitch, thanks to the impending postseason. Simply put, late December NFL games have direct and immediate consequences.
The NBA, meanwhile, is just a quarter into its season in December with many of its storylines still taking shape. The playoffs don’t begin until the following spring, and the race for the postseason intensifies after the All-Star Game (and not coincidentally, the Super Bowl) in February. Nevertheless, regardless of whether either league publicly acknowledges the shift in who owns Christmas Day, there’s no denying it’s there. It’s happening. And it’s impossible to ignore.
“If you’re looking at the NBA Christmas games [this year], they aren’t bad games. They’re actually really good games,” said Randall Williams, Bloomberg’s U.S. sports business reporter. “The NFL basically used the NBA’s strategy of here are our young superstars, established superstars, and old rivalries.”
Dan Runchie, founder of Trapital, a company that gives insights on music and sports, won’t call it a “hostile takeover.” But the NFL’s actions speak volumes.
“It definitely feels like the NBA lost a bit of that corner. And maybe other corners, too,” Runchie said. “The NFL has games on Martin Luther King Day now. That’s another big day for the NBA and for its messaging and trying to honor Dr. King … We’ve also heard [rumblings] about the Super Bowl moving down to [Presidents Day Sunday] because they know people have that Monday off. If that happens, every cherished day the NBA has seems like the NFL is coming to creep on it.”
Beyonce, Chris Martin of Coldplay and Bruno Mars performing during the Pepsi Super Bowl 50 Halftime Show at Levi’s Stadium on February 7, 2016 in Santa Clara, California.
Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
This year, four Black quarterbacks will be starting on Christmas Day — Patrick Mahomes, Russell Wilson, Lamar Jackson and C.J. Stroud, each at different stages in their careers. Couple that with a Beyoncé concert taking place in the middle of the most tense stretch of the NFL season — the push for the playoffs — and you have a recipe for high-stakes drama and entertainment that’s almost impossible to find anywhere else. Moreover, Netflix’s decision to broadcast the event is a case study in how quickly businesses chart different courses.
Netflix once shunned ads and the price tag that came with live sports, instead attracting viewers with its vast streaming library. In October 2023, co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the company had no plans to change its stance on live sports. By May of this year, however, Netflix announced it had paid $150M to air two NFL games on Christmas. And last month — despite well-documented lagging issues — its stream of a boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul drew well over one hundred million worldwide viewers (65 million concurrently), making it the most streamed “global sporting event” ever, according to the company. And that was before Beyoncé was announced.
“Now, you place Beyoncé there, and you have a whole group of fans who will be like, ‘I don’t care about the game. I just wanna watch this,’ ” said Williams, before pausing to add, “it’s huge.”
Beyoncé’s inclusion matters because of the reality of what Netflix is attempting to pull off — asking viewers to watch games they’ve only needed network TV to enjoy before can be a heavy lift. But it’s not impossible.
“If you’re gonna do that, you want to be able to make it big. And if you’re gonna make it big, you get Beyoncé who has been part of some of the more memorable Super Bowl halftime performances we’ve seen,” said Runchie. “Getting a Super Bowl halftime-level performer to do it on your platform is monumental.”
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In October, the NFL announced it would renew its partnership with Carter and Roc Nation. The decision made sense. Roc Nation has helped the NFL with its Inspire Change social justice initiative, which has awarded $375 million in grants. Meanwhile, the halftime shows produced in recent years have broken records and won Emmys. Roc Nation has given the league a cultural cache it desperately needed when the two entities came together a half decade ago.
And as Godell said, the lawsuit against Carter isn’t stopping the business at hand, but it does complicate an already complex relationship that from the start was, at best, contentious in the court of public opinion.
No fabric of American society in recent years has been immune to the conversation around the #MeToo movement, especially hip-hop. And the case against Sean “Diddy” Combs was largely seen as an entry point to eradicate the predatory virus that has plagued the music industry since its inception. Carter was not originally named in the lawsuit, but was added to the petition after he refused to engage in settlement negotiations with the accuser’s attorney, Tony Buzbee. The NFL has a well-documented history with Buzbee, the Houston-based attorney who represented over 20 women who accused Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson of sexual misconduct.
League sources close to the Watson proceedings said Buzbee acted in bad faith during those discussions, but the evidence against Watson in several of the allegations were damning.
“[Watson] had to either settle all of them or battle the NFL and his accusers in court,” one league source told Andscape. “With Watson, [Buzbee] had the right one. With Jay-Z? I don’t know if this goes the way he wants it to.”
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Few expect the suit against Carter — which NBC News said contains significant inconsistencies in the accuser’s account — to negatively impact the NFL’s bottom line. But it still leaves a stink on their relationship and highlights how we struggle to talk about sexual assault, especially when celebrities are involved.
“If anything, I think [Beyoncé’s] performance gives Jay-Z a temporary cover that will probably distract the public from the lawsuit,” said Proctor-Habil. “Alternatively, I do think we’re turning toward a culture that is no longer willing to let the rich and powerful off the hook.”
While the legal process plays out, Beyoncé’s is poised to take center stage for the NFL once again. But why?
The easy answer: It’s good business. She’s already performed on the NFL’s grandest stage twice, headlining the Super Bowl in 2013 and 2016, and has a well-established relationship with Netflix. In 2019, Beyoncé agreed to a three-project deal worth roughly $60 million with the streamer. Her first offering was 2019’s Homecoming, which documented the 32-time Grammy winner’s generational-defining Coachella performance.
“This could potentially be the second one, though we’ve yet to see any confirmation on that from either side,” said Runchie.
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Netflix did not respond to inquiries on the subject. However, if Beyoncé is able to monetize this halftime performance thanks to her relationship with the streamer — when the NFL has historically never compensated its performers — it would be par for the course for Queen Bey, said Runchie.
“If we believe this to be true, then that’s $20M specifically for this performance,” he said. In 2012, Beyoncé inked a $50M deal with Pepsi, which had just become the Super Bowl’s sponsor. “Part of the deal was Beyoncé doing that 2013 Super Bowl in New Orleans. And that likely pushed her to be the surprise guest in 2016 for Super Bowl 50. Then you have this Netflix deal. Everyone else is doing it for ‘free.’ But she continues to find a way to get paid even if it’s not directly from the NFL.”
No matter how the deal came to be, having Beyoncé perform in her hometown of Houston on Christmas Day was simply too much of a gift-wrapped present for the NFL to deny. The earlier game features the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs traveling to Pittsburgh to take on the Steelers in a game with critical playoff implications. And if that weren’t enough, the Queen of Christmas herself, Mariah Carrey will kick off each game with a pre-taped performance of her perennial holiday hit, “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
Whether Christmas becomes the next coveted cultural stage for the NFL depends on far more than just Beyoncé. She is the safest of bets (perhaps next to Taylor Swift), but whether “inaugural” graduates to “annual” will depend on the number of eyes on the games and the public perception around them. Since 1997, the NFL has hosted performances on Thanksgiving. This includes one of 2024’s most prominent artists in Shaboozey and his record-setting hit, “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” Yet, none of those performances have come close to the importance of a Super Bowl halftime show. And none of those were featured on Netflix, with its vast international base, or included Beyoncé, who brings a legion of loyal fans.
“It’ll be tough to compare ratings and viewers because what Netflix counts as a viewer is very different from what Nielsen counts as a viewer,” said Runchie.
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Envisioning a scenario where ratings determine which stage is supreme — Beyoncé on Christmas Day or Kendrick Lamar at the Super Bowl — is predictable, according to Runchie. It’s already happening. But the actual calculus is far more complex.
“It may lead to a more nuanced discussion,” Runchie said. “With Netflix, it gets a little tricky because it’s people going into a service, sitting down and it’s not just an on-demand thing they can watch at their own time … It’s a good problem to have if you’re the NFL, but it could create some interesting dynamics for sure.”
Beyoncé’s’s mother, Tina Knowles, isn’t worried about a repeat performance of the streaming issues that plagued the Tyson vs. Paul spectacle last month. She said God will guide her daughter’s performance. A lot, though, is riding on the line for several parties. There’s Roc Nation’s further foray into establishing the NFL as a culturally relevant brand. Netflix’s desire to create a stage that will, at the very least, serve as the ideal complement to the Super Bowl’s halftime while commandeering one of the most coveted TV dates of the year. As for Beyoncé, it’s equal parts trailblazing and direct statement to the governing board that’s kept her from the last box she’s yet to check in an iconic career, Album of the Year.
The partnership exemplifies American capitalism at its finest hour. Three superpowers coming together with the common goal of dominating in multiple ways. With success come advertising dollars and the desire for the biggest names in music to spend their Christmas on the NFL’s massive stage. But before the league can plot on the future of its role in Christmas, they have to get this one right.
The NFL already owns several days of the year. Only time will tell if a child of destiny delivers the league a holiday present that could ultimately change the arc of sports history. One thing’s for sure. It won’t be without trying.
Justin Tinsley is a senior culture writer for Andscape. He firmly believes “Cash Money Records takin’ ova for da ’99 and da 2000” is the single most impactful statement of his generation.
