It doesn't take much these days to get an angry mob together, especially now that the internet is our major means of communicating with one another. Even one person's small grievance can quickly turn into a cause célèbre for millions, so it's really no surprise that when it was revealed that commercials would be coming to NFL RedZone, which ESPN gained as part of its acquisition of NFL Network in early August, fans went ballistic.
As current events have proven time and again, you can mess with a lot of our fundamental rights as Americans and still hear crickets in return. Mess with our football though, and that's where we draw the line.
Millions of fans around the country have been looking forward to the NFL season for months, and many of them primarily consume league content through marathon bouts of NFL RedZone on Sunday. RedZone is like a football fever dream, flitting from one exciting game to the next so that fans can be like Michelle Yeoh and experience every NFL game everywhere all at once.
RedZone has long touted itself as carrying "seven hours of commercial-free football," so when longtime host Scott Hanson said a couple of days ago during an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show that there would now be commercials, it instantly drew a frothing mob online, ready to burn it all down.
The league and its partners already prey on fans who want nothing more than to enjoy their favorite sport. Games are split between myriad streamers and service providers, forcing people to shell out for services they may not otherwise want just to be able to keep up. Most of those streamers charge extra if subscribers wish to avoid ads, effectively hitting them twice.
The NFL is big business, and if it feels like the league bases its decisions on what will make the most money, that's because it does. Look no further than the proposed 18-game schedule, which seems all but destined to become a reality despite fans and players all being against its implementation.
Are commercials on NFL RedZone really the end of the world?
For a while, RedZone was one of the last pure things we had left, but fans noticed late last year that ads sometimes ran on half the screen while football ran on the other. That's what's going to happen going forward, the NFL confirmed on Thursday. NFL insider Adam Schefter then reported some more details, which should take the sting away for most.
Some added clarity: NFL RedZone is seven hours — 420 minutes. Over that time, viewers will be served 1-2 total minutes of ads in :15 increments. This comes out to anywhere between 0.25% - 0.5% of the total time, considerably less than other sports/entertainment programs. https://t.co/7JyLSLi30E
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 4, 2025
Having just one or two minutes of commercials in seven hours is still pretty darn good. Is it commercial-free? No, it isn't, but even when ads run, there will still be football on-screen.
The people most upset by this didn't seem to know that there were ads running last year, meaning they must not watch RedZone to begin with. Add them to the ever-growing list of people online who spout outrage at things they don't understand and aren't invested in in any way.
Look, it's accurate to say that even having a tiny amount of commercials is objectively worse than having none. It's also keeping with the state of the world, where things just seem to be getting worse in most ways all the time. That's not to rationalize it, because if people do have their viewing experiences ruined by a couple of ads, nothing I say will change that. For now though, this shouldn't be such a huge deal.
The worry is that this is just the beginning. Oftentimes these big companies will introduce something innocuous before really turning the screws. It's easy to picture ESPN announcing next year that there will now be five minutes of ads, which is only a tiny bit more than one or two. Fast forward a decade and we could have full-on commercial breaks, causing us to miss Caleb Williams throwing his 400th touchdown pass to Rome Odunze (hey, a Bears fan can dream).
If and when that happens, fans can always vote with their wallet and say enough is enough. If they want to do that now, then hey, that's up to them. For the rest of us, we're just two days away from one of the best days of the year. Let's celebrate instead of complaining over a minute inconvenience.