Mitchell Leff / Getty Images Reigning Super Bowl champion Philadelphia is set to face Dallas in the NFL's season opener tonight.
Mitchell Leff / Getty Images
Reigning Super Bowl champion Philadelphia is set to face Dallas in the NFL's season opener tonight.
On a recent television appearance, NFL RedZone host Scott Hanson sounded borderline apologetic as he let football fans know that advertising will creep further into the high-octane TV product, which offers up a daylong buffet of highlights from across the league.
“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 on the Pat McAfee Show.
That set off a media and social-media cycle packed with a level of pre-season fan concern typically preserved for last-minute injuries to vital fantasy-team players or debates about what kind of dip to serve on Sunday.
And that’s arguably unsurprising, since RedZone, currently available as part of a plan that runs $15 a month, has subscribers said to number in the tens of millions—and they’re gearing up for the first weekend of action this season at this very moment. (The first game is actually tonight.)
Out of that confusion came some clarity, with the NFL explaining that yes, in fact, there will be a “limited number” of “double-box” ads—in short, a split screen with the ad in one box and football in the other, and the ad’s audio playing—shown during each Sunday broadcast this season.
During testing last season, a league spokesman told Investopedia, the league saw “extremely limited negative feedback” after checking social media and holding focus groups. “Sponsors have been an important part of the NFL RedZone broadcast for more than a decade,” the spokesman said. “The team and league work very hard to find a balance that supports the show’s partners and fans.
Television viewers have grown increasingly accustomed to advertising showing up on services for which they pay. The most high-profile example might have been Netflix’s (NFLX) launch of an ad-supported tier in 2022.
Subscriptions to sports-specific services made up about 6% of the total streaming video-on-demand subscriptions of 340 million, according to a recent report from Antenna, falling slightly this year so far after rising 5% in 2024. New offerings continue to land, including one from Walt Disney (DIS) and another targeting soccer fans.
But this weekend, for many sports lovers, is all about the NFL. On Sunday, as Hanson told McAfee, you can expect him to make an announcement many have been waiting months to hear, ads or otherwise: "Seven hours of RedZone football starts now.”
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