🍗 How the NFL Took Over Thanksgiving

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Happy Wednesday,

Before the NFL ever touched Thanksgiving, the holiday already belonged to football. College teams owned it. High schools owned it. Entire towns built their calendars around it.

In fact, the only level of football that couldn’t make Thanksgiving work was the pros.

See, in the 1920s and early 1930s, pro football wasn’t a cultural event. Teams folded constantly, stadiums were mostly empty, and every Thanksgiving game some random pro league tried felt small compared to the college blockbusters happening the same day. Professional football wasn’t just losing the day; it wasn’t even in the conversation.

However, in 1934, the Detroit Lions changed that, but not because they were great; in fact, they weren’t drawing many fans at all. What they had was an owner with a media weapon and a simple idea for fixing the NFL’s Thanksgiving problem. And that one bet ended up creating the most valuable regular-season real estate in American sports.

Today, we break down how it happened.

🎧 [Listen to our full episode on the business of Thanksgiving football]

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5 Takeaways From Our Conversation About the NFL’s Thanksgiving Takeover

1. College football (not the pros) was the real powerhouse

In the early 1900s, the “big-time” version of American sports wasn’t professional at all. College football was the country's main attraction. Stadiums at Yale, Harvard, Michigan, Chicago, Penn, and others were drawing crowds that the pros couldn’t dream of.

A Michigan–Chicago Thanksgiving game was a national spectacle; a professional football game was often just a local curiosity.

And it wasn’t just football, baseball, boxing, cycling, and billiards; all had more prestige, more media coverage, and far bigger crowds than the earliest versions of pro football.

Professional sports were fragmented, underfunded, and viewed as second-tier. College sports had the tradition, the talent, and the audience. High schools even outdrew early pro teams in some regions.

So when several professional football leagues tried to establish themselves on Thanksgiving, they weren’t just competing for attention. They were trying to break into a holiday already owned by the most popular sports product in America: the college game.

2. The Detroit Lions used Thanksgiving as a publicity stunt

When radio executive George Richards purchased the Portsmouth Spartans and moved them to Detroit, he inherited a good football team with almost no fans.

Detroit was 10–0 in 1934 but averaged fewer than 12,000 fans per game. Richards needed attention, and he had an asset no owner had: control of a major NBC radio affiliate.

So he engineered an idea no one else thought to try: create a marquee Thanksgiving matchup, put the defending NFL Champion Chicago Bears on the schedule, and use his radio network to broadcast the game nationwide.

3. The broadcast changed everything overnight

Detroit sold out 26,000 tickets two weeks early. Another 20,000-25,000 people reportedly would have shown up if the stadium were bigger.

However, more importantly, the country finally heard a professional football game in unison. Not regionally. Not locally. Nationally.

The newly formed NFL wasn’t being compared to college football anymore. It was finally being introduced as a product of its own.

That moment locked Detroit into the Thanksgiving slot permanently (minus the WWII pause).

4. Dallas used the same playbook and built a brand

In 1966, the Cowboys were still a struggling franchise trying to build a national identity. So they did what Detroit did: volunteer for Thanksgiving and use the spotlight to grow.

80,000 fans showed up. TV numbers spiked. The Cowboys turned the day into an annual brand builder and eventually the most-watched team in the country.

And aside from two years in the 1970s when the NFL tried to save the St. Louis Cardinals from relocation (hint, it didn’t work), they never gave the slot back.

5. The NFL finally turned Thanksgiving into premium inventory

By 2006, the league realized the two fixed hosts weren’t enough. Ratings were too big. Demand was too high. So the NFL added a primetime game and turned Thanksgiving into a three-part broadcast event.

Last year, the Cowboys–Giants drew 42 million viewers. That makes Thanksgiving not just a football tradition, but one of the most valuable media properties in America.

Why It Matters

Thanksgiving didn’t elevate football; football elevated Thanksgiving long before the NFL arrived. What changed the holiday was the league finally using it correctly.

Detroit used Thanksgiving to manufacture national relevance, Dallas used it to build a brand, and now the league uses it to print ratings that no other regular-season moment can match.

It’s a reminder of a bigger trend in sports business: distribution determines dominance. The NFL didn’t win Thanksgiving because of its product. It won because it controlled the microphone.

🎧 [Listen to our full episode on the business of Thanksgiving football]

📩 And don’t forget: Bottom of the Ninth is back this Friday with the top three stories in sports and business from the week.

See you then,
Tyler & Jake