NFL RedZone host Scott Hanson has announced that the broadcast will feature commercials this season for the first time.
Until now, Hanson typically opened the show — which airs on Sundays and includes a full round of live updates from games across the country — with the catchphrase: “Seven hours of commercial-free football starts now.”
During an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show, Hanson revealed that he will have to rework his introduction due to the changes.
However, he also assured viewers that they will “not miss a touchdown.”
It is not clear exactly how long commercial breaks will be in upcoming broadcasts, or what form they will take.
Hanson suggested that his team will “pick and choose” when to cut to commercial, while a source told Front Office Sports that there will be just one minute of commercials, split into four 15 second chunks, and that they will be shown in split-screen so that the action can continue uninterrupted.
A similar style of on-screen commercial was trialled last year.
As for Hanson’s catchphrase, he’ll now introduce the show with the words: “Seven hours of RedZone football start now.”
Fans on social media have reacted angrily to the idea of RedZone including commercials.
“If you have an ounce of integrity in your body you will boycott NFL Redzone right now,” wrote one X user. “Do not reward them for this bulls***. Unsubscribe and pirate it until they get it through their heads: No Commercials Means No Commercials.”
Another opined: “The outrage everyone had over the f***ing Cracker Barrel logo is the outrage everyone needs to have over the NFL RedZone having commercials this season.”
An X post stating: “LIKE THIS POST IF YOU HATE WHAT ESPN IS DOING TO #NFL REDZONE” has been liked over 23,000 times.
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Last month it was announced that ESPN had purchased the NFL Network, which includes the rights to NFL RedZone.
On today’s episode of The Pat McAfee Show, the host apologized for downplaying the significance of commercials coming to NFL RedZone.
“I responded to Scott Hanson with saying, ‘We don’t care,’” McAfee said, per Awful Announcing. “Now when I said ‘we,’ I did think I was speaking for a large portion of people. But when I said ‘we don’t care,’ what I meant was ‘we’re still gonna watch. We’re still gonna watch.’ And the only reason why I said that is because they started rolling advertisements into last year…
“What I don’t think I said properly is obviously it’s not as good if we’re adding commercials. Whenever it was just pure, without commercials, and we had paid for an upgrade of a product so we don’t have to see commercials, that was better. But as soon as soon as they started seeing a little bit of money from those L-Wraps [on-screen split-screen commercials], I think all of us that have seen or been around the NFL for a long time just assumed that the commercials would be on the way.”
