Hallmark's Holiday Touchdown Movies, Ranked By Reviews

Back in 2023, the start of the now-matrimonial romance between pop sensation Taylor Swift and multi-time Super Bowl champion Travis Kelce resulted in a significant influx of Kansas City Chiefs fans. Seemingly sensing an opportunity to tap into this emerging crossover market, the Hallmark Channel decided to join forces with the NFL to produce new made-for-TV movies that combine the network's trademark holiday romance with the epic highs and lows of professional football.

It all kicked off (pun intended) in 2024, when "Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story" premiered on the Hallmark Channel. And given just how many Hallmark Christmas movies there are already, you know the network wasn't about to settle for a one and done. Just one year later, in 2025, "Holiday Touchdown" officially became an anthology series with the release of "Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story." In October 2026, "Holiday Touchdown: A Bears Love Story" debuted on Hallmark as part of the network's 2026 Countdown to Christmas lineup, thus turning the series into a trilogy. That probably wasn't the three-peat the real-life Chiefs were hoping for — but hey, it's something.

Of course, in the world of football, each game must have a winner and a loser (or the game could end in a tie, but never mind that), and only one team can win it all at the end of the season. By that same token, one "Holiday Touchdown" movie is bound to emerge as the definitive fan favorite. So, we decided to take a look at audience reviews for all three entries in the series and rank them accordingly, just in case you're having trouble picking one for your sports-themed holiday party (or date night). Alexa, cue the "Monday Night Football" theme song.

The first entry in Hallmark's "Holiday Touchdown" series, "Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story," stars Hunter King as Alana, a woman determined to make sure her family wins the Kansas City Chiefs' Fan of the Year contest. The decision falls to the Chiefs' director of fan engagement, Derrick, played by Tyler Hynes. However, things take a turn when Alana and Derrick start to fall for one another. Neither Taylor Swift nor Travis Kelce appear in the Hallmark flick they partially (if not entirely) inspired, though the latter's mother, Donna Kelce, does make her Hallmark debut in it by playing the manager of a local barbecue joint.

Unfortunately for this movie, regarding the series it spawned, the schoolyard rhyme "first is the worst" seems to apply here. In addition to falling on the lower end of Hynes' extensive Hallmark catalog as far as audience reviews are concerned, "A Chiefs Love Story" also finds itself in last place when stacked up against the other two entries in the "Holiday Touchdown" trilogy. At the time of writing, the film holds a weighted average user rating of 6.4/10 on IMDb. Over on Letterboxd, meanwhile, it has a weighted average rating of 2.15/5. So, its average across both sites comes out to exactly 5.35/10.

"Hearing there's Oscar buzz for Donna Kelce," one Letterboxd user who gave the film a 1/5 rating sarcastically remarked. Netizens also poked fun at "A Chiefs Love Story" for completely glossing over the obvious conflict of interest Alana and Derrick's romance creates with respect to the Fan of the Year contest. "All's fair in love and poetry," we suppose?

For the sophomore entry in its NFL crossover film series, Hallmark left Kansas City behind and ventured northeast to Buffalo, New York, for "Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story." No conflicts of interest here, as this film stars Holland Roden and Matthew Daddario as lifelong Bills fans and neighbors Morgan and Gabe (though the latter does happen to be the team's VP of stadium development). Since childhood, Gabe has had an unconfessed crush on Morgan. However, he may finally get the push he needs when the two team up to identify the person who's been sending Morgan's uncle anonymous Christmas presents ever year.

The Bills may have failed to topple the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game in early 2025, but if it's any consolation, they did at least manage to narrowly secure a more well-received Hallmark movie than their rivals later that same year. On IMDb, "A Bills Love Story" has a weighted average user rating of 6.3/10 as of writing — just below the rating held by "A Chiefs Love Story." That being said, with a weighted average Letterboxd rating of 2.39/5, the Buffalo-set feature manages to snatch second place. All told, across both sites, "A Bills Love Story" finishes with an average rating of 5.54/10. It's not exactly a blowout, but sometimes, it's that last field goal that wins you the game.

"This plot is so cheesy it might as well come in a bright blue bag labeled 'Official Snack of Bills Mafia wives.' Honestly? That's exactly why I loved it," one popular 2.5/5 review of the film reads. The user concluded their thoughts by stating that they would have given it three stars had Bills quarterback Josh Allen made a cameo. Alas, it was not to be.

The third and, to date, most recent entry in the "Holiday Touchdown" saga, "Holiday Touchdown: A Bears Love Story," brings the anthology series back to the Midwest — more specifically, the Windy City. This film stars Lyndsy Fonseca as Avery, a freelance reporter visiting Chicago from New York to see her mom, Jody (played by Barbara Alyn Woods), and stepdad, Ron (played by Khary Payton). During her trip, Avery gets an impromptu assignment to cover an elderly Chicago Bears fan named Darlene, played by Marsha Mason, who is about to attend her 500th game. However, Darlene is far more interested in playing matchmaker and setting Avery up with her grandson, Matt, played by Robert Buckley.

Call it recency bias, but if the online reviews are anything to go on, "A Bears Love Story" is comfortably the best entry in the series so far, as it's thus far outperformed "A Chiefs Love Story" and "A Bills Love Story" on both IMDb and Letterboxd. On the former, it holds a weighted average user rating of 7.4/10 as of writing. On the latter, it has a weighted average rating of 3.1/5. So, between the two sites, it easily wins this three-way race with an average rating of 6.8/10. Unlike the previous two entries, "A Bears Love Story" also actually features a cameo by the titular team's starting quarterback — so, there's that.

As you've probably come to expect by now, though, the individual Letterboxd reviews tend to have a lighthearted sarcasm about them. As one 3/5 review reads, "This might've been rated higher until the very unrealistic part where they went from [Soldier Field], to Gran's house, and back to [Soldier Field] before halftime." As any Chicagoan will tell you, game-day traffic is no joke.

Now that the game is over and the three competing teams have returned to their respective locker rooms, it's time to go a little inside baseball (or should we say "inside football"?) and explain the exact methodology behind how we ranked the entries in Hallmark's "Holiday Touchdown" trilogy. As you might have already gathered, we took each film's weighted average user scores on IMDb and Letterboxd, then averaged them together to get a single, definitive rating that would determine its place in the countdown.

Of course, IMDb and Letterboxd use different review scales, but that's not too difficult to account for. For example, "Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story" has an IMDb rating of 6.4/10, so we used the 10-point scale as our baseline. The film's Letterboxd average of 2.15/5 is equivalent to 4.3/10. Average 6.4 and 4.3 together and, voilá, you have a final rating of 5.35/10. Granted, while the battle between "A Chiefs Love Story" and "A Bills Love Story" was decided by a margin of less than one point, a single look at how "A Bears Love Story" fared on IMDb and Letterboxd made it pretty clear from jump that it was going to take the crown.