Ads come to NFL RedZone channel for the first time on Sunday; will they be back?
Ads come to NFL RedZone channel for the first time on Sunday; will they be back?
The days of ‘seven hours of commercial-free football’ could be over.
Is nothing sacred? It seems that the creep of advertisements back into the lives of regular TV and streaming watchers is unavoidable. First, viewers had to watch as streaming services raised the price of ad-free plans while launching ad-supported tiers. Now, commercials have come to one of the last ad-free bastions left on TV: NFL RedZone. The channel has long promised “seven hours of commercial-free football,” but that changed on Sunday, as viewers noticed the channel showing ads for the first time.
Key Details:
- Football fans took to social media to express their disappointment with the addition of commercials to RedZone.
- The NFL says the week was just an experiment, and commercials will not return for the rest of the year.
- Fans should almost certainly expect ads to return in 2025.
Fans were more than unhappy with the change to ads on RedZone, and expressed their feelings on social media. The whip-around show’s host Scott Hanson acknowledged the change by welcoming fans to “seven hours of football” on Sunday morning, omitting the “commercial-free” from his usual start to the show.
A league spokesperson told Front Office Sports that the ads were an experiment, and that this would be the final time in 2024 that viewers would see them during RedZone. The ads themselves were for companies like Gatorade and Lowes, which are already league sponsors.
The league isn’t ruling out the return of ads in the future, and a source with knowledge of the situation told FOS that companies have been interested in advertising via RedZone for several years. It’s too valuable a space to ignore, especially considering the popularity of NFL games.
The Streamable’s take
Fans should absolutely expect ads to return to NFL RedZone starting in the 2025 season. The NFL has spent too much time trying shopping its cable and TV assets around, first to ESPN, then to Paramount, to make me think that the networks are doing well financially.
The introduction of ads would help boost income for the RedZone channel, as it has for a wide variety of on-demand streamers in the recent past. Services like Netflix, Disney+, and Prime Video have all rolled out ad-supported plans in the last year or two.
The relationship between ads and TV has always been symbiotic, and that’s not going to change because viewers are leaving traditional cable behind. Programmers need ads as much as advertisers need programmers, and with fewer and fewer viewers watching linear TV in general, ad agencies need new spaces to try to earn money in.
NFL RedZone is still one of the best ways to see action from all around the league in a given day, without having to pay hundreds of dollars per season for an NFL Sunday Ticket subscription. But fans might want to get used to the idea of RedZone no longer being an ad-free space.
Sling TV
Sling TV is The Streamable’s choice for cord cutters on a budget. Sling is a live TV streaming service with multiple channel packages. The $45.99/month Sling Orange plan offers about 30 channels, including Disney Channel and ESPN. The $45.99/month Sling Blue plan offers about 40 channels, including ABC, Fox, and NBC in major markets.
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