Every Sunday during the regular season, NFL Red Zone host Scott Hanson welcomes viewers with the promise of “seven hours of commercial-free football.”

Only Sunday’s broadcast of Week 15 failed to live up to that very pledge, with viewers noticing that it featured multiple ads throughout the day.

While most of the ads came in the form of split screens with game action still visible, there were enough that they became a major talking point — and source of frustration — on social media. An NFL Media spokesperson confirmed to Sportico that RedZone’s Sunday broadcast ran “test” ads for league partners, including Gatorade, Verizon, Visa and Lowe’s.

RIP “SEVEN HOURS OF COMMERCIAL FREE FOOTBALL!” while watching RedZone.

We used to live in a proper society. pic.twitter.com/l3E2TJEyoE

— NFL Memes (@NFL_Memes) December 16, 2024

“7 hours of commercial free football” -NFL Redzone pic.twitter.com/vxuuart6Xc

— IronChief (@IronChief15) December 15, 2024

For the love of all things holy, there are now COMMERCIALS ON THE RED ZONE CHANNEL!! pic.twitter.com/GpxhtP98Dg

—  Fᴏᴏᴛʙᴀʟʟ Zᴇʙʀᴀs🇺🇦 (@footballzebras) December 15, 2024

Citing a source with knowledge of the league’s thinking, Sportico reports that the NFL doesn’t have any plans to run the test again. Should the league opt to implement ads on a permanent basis, it wouldn’t happen until the start of the 2025 season.

Reached for comment by Awful Announcing, an NFL spokesperson directed us to Sportico’s report.

While the NFL hasn’t given any indication that RedZone will be adding commercials next season, it’s worth noting that it also didn’t give any warning ahead of Sunday’s test run. In fact, Hanson even made his weekly pledge of “commercial-free football,” despite the ensuing broadcast including ads.

It turns out Scott DID say 7 hours commercial free a few minutes later. This will end my investigation into RedZone commercials (h/t @amccray33) pic.twitter.com/ciP82Zykqo

— CJ Fogler 🫡 (@cjzero) December 15, 2024

That the NFL would even experiment with such ads would seemingly indicate that it’s not a matter of “if” but “when” commercials will become a regular part of the RedZone experience. While the test run may have unsurprisingly been received poorly from viewers, unless there are enough cancellations to offset the revenue brought in by the ads, there’s no reason to think the NFL won’t move forward with the approach.

For now, however, it appears that the final three weeks of the 2024 regular season will remain commercial-free on RedZone. But if we were Scott Hanson, we might want to spend some time this offseason workshopping a new catchphrase, just in case.

[Sportico]