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NFL, Peacock Hope to Tackle Commercial Breaks, But Others Have Tested Similar Blitz

Analysis: A pro football game with a commercial-free fourth quarter? Fans will no doubt love it, but such a play may be hard to pull off again and again

When the Buffalo Bills square off against the Los Angeles Chargers on Saturday via a game streamed on NBC’s Peacock, they will, for at least a period of time, do so without one of their most supportive fans: Madison Avenue.

Peacock plans to stream the game’s fourth quarter without commercials, essentially sacrificing 12 minutes, or 40% of a game’s standard ad load, that would normally have been used to spotlight promotional messages for beer, gadgets and cars, among other products. Viewers won’t see the act as taking away anything. That’s 12 minutes more of game play, analyst banter and football chatter — the stuff they came for in the first place.

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“We are proud to work with our partners at the NFL to present this first-of-its kind experience,” said NBC Sports President Rick Cordella, in a statement. It’s true that no one has tested such a feat in a streaming NFL game before. But others have worked similar plans in the past. Many of them go from being the first of their kind to being the only — a sign of how difficult the process of truly eliminating commercial interruptions from video entertainment is to accomplish.

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In 2006, the Texas Longhorns took on the Oklahoma State Cowboys in Saturday-night game on TBS, the popular cable network then owned by Time Warner. As part of a $2.5 million ad deal with Philips Electronics, the network cut 33 minutes of national ad time and traditional promos, and allowed play-by-play announcer Ron Thulin and his colleagues to spend more time talking about the game. Philips even snatched up ad inventory in the game that was earmarked for commercials for local cable systems in New York and Los Angeles, though the company couldn’t buy it out across the nation –an onerous process. (The Fox broadcast network found out how difficult such an idea was in 2018, when the company proposed cutting all commercials from parts of its Sunday primetime schedule, only to get massive pushback from executives who ran the parent company’s local stations, who needed those ads to keep critical revenue flowing).

Streaming may make such concepts easier to put into practice. Services such as Peacock and Max aren’t typically obligated to devote ad minutes from local stations, as broadcast networks are, or cede time to local cable systems, as cable outlets must do. Indeed, the ad-supported streamers generally distribute commercials according to more complex algorithms that hinge on the geographic location of the viewer, or some of their particular demographics.

Cutting out commercials on such a large scale still remains difficult. A network has to find a different way to get the ad dollars it would normally have received from running the commercials. Indeed, Peacock has secured a broader sponsorship pact with Capital One, Hyundai and Walmart that calls for the marketing trio to get credit in a shout-out just before the commercial-free quarter commences. Relying on such an arrangement in the future could be tough. Football games — with their big, live audiences all watching at the same time — are one of TV’s most desirable outlets or advertisers who still need to reach millions of consumers to make their cash registers ring. Few of them are likely to want to restrain themselves in such a fashion for very long.

Still, many have at least tried. CBS was able to run a broadcast of “60 Minutes” with fewer national ads and longer news segments in 2005 as the result of a $2 million pact with Philips Electronics (which, for a time, ran a campaign that tried to show how its products made life easier for consumers). CBS tested the concept again in 2018, when it struck a deal with Google to sponsor a segment of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” that would normally have been used for a commercial break. Colbert introduced viewers to a vignette titled “More Show Presented by: Google’s Nest Hello video doorbell.” Fox for a period of time last decade ran commercial-free season premieres of its spy drama “24,” with Ford Motor Co. bookending the episodes with longer-than-usual ads. But to make them happen, the network had to find a way to give its affiliates the ad minutes they lost as a result of the effort.

NBC has good reason to help the NFL in its quest to cut interruptions to game play. The league has put pressure on all of the networks that show its games to do so. Fox even cut a commercial break from each quarter of its broadcast of Super Bowl LIV.

Yet no one can run a TV business without ad dollars — even if the simultaneous crowds that tune in TV shows are getting smaller due to the rise of on-demand streaming hubs like Peacock, Hulu, Max and others.

The growing challenge? Most of the couch potatoes who leave traditional TV for streaming do so because subscription-based services like Netflix offer ad-free tiers. Of course, that is changing. Netflix, Disney, Max and others offer options that does feature advertising, The dynamic is likely to accelerate further in 2024 when Amazon Prime Video makes advertising its default option. Prime subscribers who don’t want to watch ads will have to pony up another $2.99 per month.

Streamers continue to look for ways to surround their shows with ads, rather than interrupting them. “Pause ads,” commercials that surface on screen whenever a user choose to stop the action, have become a popular concept. But few football fans seem likely to halt a game in mid-action.

The NFL runs dozens of games each season. Doing so with ad-free portions may be a once-in-a-lifetime play that proves hard to repeat.

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