For years, NFL fans have come to know that the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys always play on Thanksgiving Day. These games often see high viewership with family gatherings taking place and people off of work with many places closed for the day, including the country's major stock markets.
Here's a look at the tradition of the NFL and Thanksgiving and why these two historic franchises always play on the holiday.
Lions and Cowboys Thanksgiving Day Games: Dating back to 1934, the Detroit Lions have played in the annual Thanksgiving Day game. The lone exceptions were the 1939 through 1944 seasons that weren't played due to World War II. The games have become a staple for the National Football League.
The idea for the Thanksgiving Day game was created by former Lions owner G.A. Richards as a way to increase attendance and media hype for the team. Richards purchased the Portsmouth (Ohio) Spartans and moved them to Detroit before the tradition began.
The first Thanksgiving Day game was watched by more than 26,000 fans.
The Dallas Cowboys played on Thanksgiving Day in 1966, beating the Cleveland Browns 26-14. The Cowboys' first Thanksgiving Day game was attended by 80,259 people. The Cowboys have played a Thanksgiving Day game every year since except 1975 and 1977.
Similar to the Lions, the Cowboys saw the holiday as a way to create more national media attention for the team.
The Lions created the concept, and the game pre-dates the Super Bowl and many of the NFL teams being created, which makes tradition the biggest reason why the Lions and Cowboys play in their respective games annually.
In 2006, the NFL added a prime-time Thanksgiving Day game that features two rotating teams.
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Thanksgiving Day Stats: The Lions lost its first Thanksgiving Day game and haven't had success in many of the contests: the franchise holds an all-time 38-45-2 record in Thanksgiving Day games. The Lions won their 2024 Thanksgiving Day game, which broke a previous streak of seven straight losses on the holiday.
As the creators of the game concept, the Lions have the most Thanksgiving Day wins with 38, but one of the worst records overall.
The Cowboys have had better success in their games, holding an all-time-record of 34-22-1.
While they don't play every year, two other teams largely featured are the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers, which hold all-time Thanksgiving Day records of 20-16-2 and 16-20-2, respectively. The Packers will be featured in one of this year's three Thanksgiving Day games.
The Jacksonville Jaguars are the only NFL team to never play in a Thanksgiving Day game. Several teams have never won on Thanksgiving Day, with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Cincinnati Bengals each holding a 0-1 record.
2025 Thanksgiving Day Games: Here's a look at the three 2025 Thanksgiving Day games, how to watch and the betting odds.
- Green Bay Packers (7-3-1) at Detroit Lions (7-4): 1:00 p.m. ET on FOX, a unit of Fox Corporation (NASDAQ:FOX)
- Kansas City Chiefs (6-5) at Dallas Cowboys (5-5-1): 4:30 p.m. ET on CBS, a unit of Paramount Skydance (NASDAQ:PSKY)
- Cincinnati Bengals (3-8) at Baltimore Ravens (6-5): 8:20 p.m. on NBC, a unit of Comcast Corp (NASDAQ:CMCSA)
The Chiefs are 5-5 overall on Thanksgiving Day and the Baltimore Ravens are 2-0 on the holiday.
Current odds from DraftKings Inc (NASDAQ:DKNG) show the following favorites and the point spread they need to win by to cover:
- Detroit Lions -2.5
- Kansas City Chiefs: -3.5
- Baltimore Ravens: -7
Betting on all three favorites to win pays out with odds of +232, which would turn $100 bet into a profit of $232 if the Lions, Chiefs and Ravens all win. Betting on all three favorites to cover the spread and win by the totals listed above would pay out at +596, turning $100 bet into a profit of $596 if all three teams cover.
Betting favorites on Thanksgiving Day are 51-9 straight up and 40-20 against the spread since 2004, according to data from Action Network.
Favorites of 7 points or more are 30-5 straight up and 25-10 against the spread since 2004.
Why It’s Important: This year's Thanksgiving Day games feature several of the top teams in the league and favorites to win the Super Bowl. The Eagles, Chiefs, Lions and Ravens all are ranked in the top 10 favorites for Super Bowl betting odds at DraftKings with odds of +750, +950, +1200 and +1200 respectively. The Packers trail closely behind ranked 11th with odds of +1400.
The Chiefs, Lions, Ravens and Packers all made the 2024 NFL Playoffs.
This year's Thanksgiving Day games come with prediction markets offering more sports betting with Kalshi, Polymarket and Robinhood Markets (NASDAQ:HOOD) offering markets for the games.
Kalshi has taken over $100,000 in bets on each of three Thanksgiving games, including nearly $1 million on the Packers, Lions game at the time of writing. Here are the current Kalshi odds for the favorites, with a correct wager paying out $1:
- Detroit Lions win: 59 cents
- Kansas City Chiefs win: 62 cents
- Baltimore Ravens win: 74 cents
This year's games have a chance to continue strong viewership for NFL games in the 2025 season, which could provide a boost to the financials of Fox, Paramount Skydance and Comcast.
NFL viewership is up 6% year-over-year through Week 11 with an average of 17.7 million viewers, the highest average through Week 11 since 2015.
Predictions for the Chiefs and Cowboys matchup call for records to be broken for a regular season NFL game, as reported by Sportico. The current record is the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys game from three years ago which had 42.06 million viewers.
Some predictions call for 50 million viewers for this year's Cowboys game.
The tradition of the Thanksgiving Day games has led to the NFL also having a game every Black Friday with Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) having rights and multiple Christmas Day games with media partner Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:NFLX).
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This article was previously published by Benzinga and has been updated.
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