Following social media, one would conclude that NFL fans were dealt a significant blow this past Wednesday. NFL RedZone host Scott Hanson was a guest on ESPN’s Pat McAfee Show and revealed that, for the first time, the program is set to feature ads over the course of a full season. A day later, more information was made public that seemed to soften the damage in one way or another.
For the last 16 campaigns, NFL RedZone has established itself as an immortal institution among television properties. Now, changes might be coming and, as we know, those are always received radically by the faithful.
However, what are the actual facts and consequences? Here are a few points for the thinking fan to consider.
The Facts
On Wednesday, September 3rd, Scott Hanson appeared on the former Colts punter’s acclaimed format to unfold some secrets about the process behind it all. Toward the end, he made it official that his catchphrase would now be “7 Hours of RedZone Football” and that he doesn’t have control over “business”.
Online reactions were sharply negative. However, the outrage lasted just one day. On Thursday, Front Office Sports reported that Week 1 would only feature four 15-second commercials – or, in total, 1 minute of ads.
Who’s Responsible?
One accusation pervasive on social media was that “ESPN is ruining RedZone.” Last month, ESPN acquired rights to NFL Network, NFL RedZone, and NFL Fantasy when the league bought a 10% stake in the network.
One high-profile personality of the channel, Scott Van Pelt, reminded critics that ESPN has no real control yet. The SportsCenter host reposted a SportsMediaWatch comment that “Disney/ESPN has literally *nothing* to do with RedZone having ads. It's a bit amazing to see so many prominent accounts pinning this on ESPN, when its deal for NFL Media 1) is months from being approved and 2) does not grant it control of RedZone.”
Credits: Front Office Sports
“Nobody’s Really Upset.”
Pat McAfee had an interesting on-air reaction to the confirmation. His response was: “I don’t think anybody is upset about the commercials. It’s an easy thing to tweet about and post about, but I don’t think anybody’s turning it off because of commercials.”
How right is McAfee? It’s not easy to give an accurate answer to that question. However, on the one hand, unless he is being completely sarcastic, the part-time WWE personality is underexaggerating the public reaction.
Social media commentary trends are one thing, and it’s not unfair to assume that those usually tend to point out and exaggerate negatives. Yet, what matters is when the reaction is impactful enough for a company’s pockets to be threatened and for that to cause changes. That, of course, eventually happened with the news of four 15-second ads.
On the other hand, the death of RedZone is also highly overstated. Yes, commercials are indeed, partly, in violation of the cornerstone concept of the show. But, unless the ads are so much that they are out of control, they are not going to be a long-term obstacle for viewers, especially in North America, where sports aficionados and TV fans alike are more ad-accepting than elsewhere. Furthermore, Hanson himself claimed in the interview that “we are not going to sacrifice any great football…/… we will not miss a touchdown, …, etc.” (Some would suspect that both are underplaying the situation due to the ESPN deal; there’s no way of proving that as of now, and we’d have to assume their innocence.)
Closing Statement
To know how harmful commercials are bound to be for NFL RedZone, we need more information, specifically on what ESPN platform(s) the program will move to beginning in 2026. If RedZone moves to linear cable or to a platform with a cheaper cost than RedZone previously posed, ads become all the more justified. Even McAfee at one point mentioned that “as soon as we heard it was in 50 million homes, …, we knew immediately there was going to be commercials dropped in there…”
Moreover, of course, if the amount of commercials reaches extremes, it would damage the show regardless of the fiscal cost. However, the signs up until the moment of writing have not indicated such dangers.
Teodor Tsenov is an aspiring sportswriter and a HBO Bachelor of Arts graduate in International Sports Management at The Hague University of Applied Sciences in The Hague, the Netherlands. He is currently a Premaster in Management student at the Rotterdam School of Management (Erasmus University). Moreover, he has previously covered NFL, MLB, the New York Jets and the Miami Marlins for Franchise Sports (UK) and Overtime Heroics (USA). You can reach out to him on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram, and via email tedogoshov@gmail.com.
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