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At the start of the 2025 season, NFL RedZone host Scott Hanson announced that commercials would be coming to the non-stop action program, which runs every Sunday throughout the day.
While it seemed jarring that a program centered around no fluff, no filler, only action and important plays would be implementing ads, Hanson attempted to alleviate fans' worries by promising there wouldn't be many and that they would be non-intrusive.
Sure, you might get one ad every hour, but would it really be that big of a deal if it were picture-in-picture, with a game running without commentator audio for 30 seconds?
And although that is how the season started with Hanson and the program, each week has snowballed into a commercial avalanche.
According to a report by the Sports Business Journal, the most recent week of games on RedZone featured 13 different ads during the broadcast.
Those non-intrusive commercials have become increasingly intrusive as the weeks have gone by, doubling not only in time but also in screen space. What began as a minor blip on the screen for Hanson to navigate around seamlessly while keeping a finger on the pulse of play has sprouted into a jungle of unkillable weeds, impossible to dance around.
Fans didn't need reports to know that the addition of ads has taken away from what made RedZone special in the first place. Each week has felt like the NFL dipping its toe further into the water to see how many sponsorships it can sell and promote without losing actual viewership from the revolutionary program it launched in 2009.
While at the moment Hanson and the broadcast can still sell RedZone as the place where you will see every big play and every major decision in a football game, we're barreling towards a future where that isn't true.
This article originally appeared on Touchdown Wire: NFL RedZone Promised Minimal Commercials — They Lied
Continue reading...
While it seemed jarring that a program centered around no fluff, no filler, only action and important plays would be implementing ads, Hanson attempted to alleviate fans' worries by promising there wouldn't be many and that they would be non-intrusive.
Sure, you might get one ad every hour, but would it really be that big of a deal if it were picture-in-picture, with a game running without commentator audio for 30 seconds?
And although that is how the season started with Hanson and the program, each week has snowballed into a commercial avalanche.
According to a report by the Sports Business Journal, the most recent week of games on RedZone featured 13 different ads during the broadcast.
Those non-intrusive commercials have become increasingly intrusive as the weeks have gone by, doubling not only in time but also in screen space. What began as a minor blip on the screen for Hanson to navigate around seamlessly while keeping a finger on the pulse of play has sprouted into a jungle of unkillable weeds, impossible to dance around.
Fans didn't need reports to know that the addition of ads has taken away from what made RedZone special in the first place. Each week has felt like the NFL dipping its toe further into the water to see how many sponsorships it can sell and promote without losing actual viewership from the revolutionary program it launched in 2009.
While at the moment Hanson and the broadcast can still sell RedZone as the place where you will see every big play and every major decision in a football game, we're barreling towards a future where that isn't true.
This article originally appeared on Touchdown Wire: NFL RedZone Promised Minimal Commercials — They Lied
Continue reading...
