{"id":116883,"date":"2025-09-03T23:54:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T23:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/116883\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T23:54:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T23:54:09","slug":"what-football-program-will-look-like-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/116883\/","title":{"rendered":"What Football Program Will Look Like in 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNFL<\/a> RedZone will air commercial messages on a regular basis for the first time this season, but a league spokesperson said football will remain on-screen while the ads run in a side-by-side box.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe NFL\u00a0tested<\/a>\u00a0four individual ads during one Sunday last December, and the number of spots appearing this Sunday afternoon will remain limited, the league said. In December, each commercial popped up alongside football action, with audio running for roughly 10-15 seconds. The NFL said its previous tests resulted in \u201cextremely limited negative feedback,\u201d including in focus group responses.\u00a0However, RedZone host Scott Hanson\u2019s mention of ads while appearing on\u00a0The Pat McAfee Show\u00a0Wednesday sparked\u00a0Reddit rancor<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0X acrimony<\/a>, with some number of fans coming to believe\u2014falsely\u2014that the ads would be more disruptive than those trials and that ESPN was behind the change.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRedZone has integrated promotional material for years, with Amazon Prime Video and DraftKings\u00a0sponsoring<\/a>\u00a0the show and certain segments. A relatively young audience of locked-in viewers makes the property particularly appealing to advertisers despite the show\u2019s celebration of its interruption-free nature going back to its 2009 debut. Now Hanson\u2019s signature sign-on, welcoming viewers to \u201cseven hours of commercial-free football,\u201d is officially dead, he said. The host will instead introduce \u201cseven hours of RedZone football\u201d starting in Week 1.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe move was made entirely by the NFL. ESPN recently made a notable acquisition<\/a> of NFL Media rights, but it will only gain distributional control over RedZone, rather than production responsibilities, and only if\/when its takeover is approved by regulators, which is expected to take at least a year.<\/p>\n

\n\tRedZone is available in cable packages, as an add-on to YouTube\u2019s Sunday Ticket service, or directly from the NFL as part of its NFL+ subscription offering, which the league is retaining in the ESPN transaction. Starting Wednesday, fans can buy NFL+ Premium and ESPN\u2019s direct-to-consumer product together for $40\/month.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to Pat McAfee, Hanson added that he won\u2019t be using the commercials to take a bathroom break. Fans are likely to stay where they are too, though they might pull their phones out.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are not going to sacrifice any great football for any of the business things,\u201d Hanson said. \u201cThe business folks are going to handle the business, and we play the hand that\u2019s dealt us. But we will not miss a touchdown. We will not say, \u2018Oh ok, this is first-and-goal from the five, but let\u2019s, you know, sell some pizza or pickup trucks.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NFL RedZone will air commercial messages on a regular basis for the first time this season, but a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85,2708,434],"class_list":["post-116883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nfl","tag-sports","tag-streaming","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}