Farewell, seven hours of commercial free football.
On Wednesday’s episode of The Pat McAfee Show, NFL Network host Scott Hanson confirmed that NFL RedZone will feature commercials during the 2025 season.
Rather than using his traditional tag line of “seven hours of commercial free football starts now,” Hanson said the new slogan each Sunday will be “seven hours of RedZone football starts now.”
This is a move that has been expected for some time. In fact, RedZone tested out using commercials with a split-screen overlay during Week 15 of the 2024 season to the surprise of everyone who was watching.
Hanson started that broadcast with his regular commercial-free catchphrase, then issued an apology a few days later by noting he was “conflicted” about using it beforehand and “made the wrong wrong decision.”
That experiment was considered a stepping stone for RedZone adding commercials on a regular basis. Pro Football Talk’s Michael David Smith noted ahead of Week 16 that the “commercial-free” slogan was no longer being used by Hanson.
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Hanson told McAfee that this season the commercials will feature full ad-breaks, not just the split-screen overlay. He has been the host of RedZone since the channel launched in September 2009.
RedZone tracks every Sunday matchup each week with whip-around coverage to games in the early- and late-afternoon windows, with the spotlight given to a team that gets into the red zone.
Wednesday’s announcement comes less than one month after the NFL purchased a 10 percent equity stake in ESPN on Aug. 3. ESPN received NFL Network, RedZone Channel, and NFL Fantasy as part of the deal.
Sunday will mark the return of RedZone for its 17th season. The Week 1 schedule includes eight games in the 1 p.m. ET window, two games kicking off at 4:05 p.m. ET and two games kicking off at 4:25 p.m. ET.
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