Every Sunday during the NFL regular season, host Scott Hanson welcomed “NFL RedZone” viewers with a growling catch phrase: “Seven hours of commercial-free football starts now!”
Hanson’s sign-on and the broadcast will be noticeably different this coming Sunday, when RedZone will feature commercials in some capacity, Hanson confirmed during an appearance on the “Pat McAfee Show.”
“When you see me come on the air,” Hanson said, “we’re gonna hit the Octobox. We’ve got eight games in the early window, taking you around to all the different cities.
“And then when we get into it ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s been more than 250 days since the first full NFL Sunday but we are back! And seven hours of RedZone football starts now.’”
In its new 2025 “commercial-free” iteration, the show will include a limited number of ads, displayed as half of a “double-box” format — familiar to RedZone viewers — with the ad in one box and a game in the other. The audio heard will be the ad.
The broadcast has featured ad elements before and experimented with commercials last season, a move that spurred viewers to complain directly to Hanson.
Hanson told McAfee that he’s “just the host.”
“The business folks handle the business and I have no say over different elements that could or could not be in the show,” Hanson said.
The NFL’s “business folks” have been working hard this year as the NFL and ESPN reached a blockbuster agreement earlier this year that will place the league’s media outlets like the NFL Network under the ESPN banner, including a license for ESPN to use the RedZone brand. However, ESPN has no input on RedZone’s production, programming or business decisions.
Per an NFL spokesperson: “The team and league work very hard to find a balance that supports the show’s partners and fans. This move has been contemplated and tested for over a year now, and is completely unrelated to the recent news regarding ESPN and the NFL. The NFL will continue to own and operate NFL RedZone should that deal be finalized.”
Why commercials? Why now?
The answer to every NFL question is often the same — money. The league’s singular focus is to grow the business and much has been written about Roger Goodell’s prophetic words in 2010 when he unveiled a bold target: The NFL would hit $25 billion in revenue by 2027. Sportico estimated the NFL’s 32 teams generated roughly $22.2 billion last year, up 8 percent from 2023.
You don’t grow at that pace by making anything sacrosanct, whether playing games on Christmas Day or promising viewers seven hours of commerical-free television as RedZone famously has via the words of Hanson. (RedZone is estimated to have about a million diehards who watch weekly.)
If history holds, viewers will complain today on social media (and maybe the first couple of weeks) and then get used to the change. I do feel for you. But the reality is NASCAR fans have adapted to “double boxes” that show an advertisement on one side and a live race on the other. The NFL will continue to find new ways to create revenue and this is one of them. — Richard Deitsch, sports media writer
(Photo: David Becker / Getty Images)