For years, the NFL convinced fans to buy the RedZone Channel with the catchphrase, “Seven hours of commercial-free football.” For fans of RedZone, those times were the good old days. And they’re not coming back.
NFL RedZone Channel is now riddled with commercials, making a mockery of the league’s previous claims that the addition of commercials on RedZone would be limited in scope.
In Week One, the spin from the NFL was that commercials would barely be noticeable — only four short commercials during the whole seven-hour RedZone broadcast. According to Sports Business Journal, by Week 13 the NFL was running 16 ads during RedZone. Half of those feature the audio of a commercial that’s being shown in one box while football can be seen in another box. The other half take over much of the screen with banner ads while football can be seen on a smaller portion of the screen.
In many ways, the commercials on RedZone are worse than the commercials for any other broadcast. During a normal game, the commercials come at a predictable time, when the game is in a timeout and the announcers inform viewers that they’re going to a break. Viewers are prepared for those commercials. On RedZone, the commercials just interrupt the broadcast with no warning, suddenly appearing on the screen that a moment earlier had been showing football. You know, football — the “commercial free” thing the NFL once assured us we were going to watch when we paid for RedZone.
But commercials now proliferate on the RedZone Channel, and there’s no reason to believe there’s any end in sight. Commercials will continue increasing, and for football fans, the experience of spending a Sunday watching RedZone Channel will continue to get worse.
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