NFL RedZone will have a new presenting sponsor for the 2023 season.
Per Sportico, DraftKings is taking over as the lead sponsor of the weekly whiparound show hosted by Scott Hanson.
Last season, Amazon’s Prime Video was the presenting sponsor of RedZone.
The site reports that in addition to on-screen graphics and branding, DraftKings “live odds and stats will occasionally be integrated into the ad-free broadcast.” Hopefully, including those live odds isn’t too out of control. No one is asking to hear a player’s odds of scoring the next touchdown each time they cross the plane.
Notably, this is a separate deal from DraftKings’ existing relationship with the NFL. The company is one of the NFL’s three official sports betting sponsors (the other two are Caesars and FanDuel), which it became in 2021. Through that sponsorship, DraftKings can run ads during games, but only six spots per game were available to both the official sponsors and “approved operators” in both 2021 and 2022.
While RedZone is famously ad-free, sponsoring the show and integrating content helps DraftKings get around that lack of break time.
Following the NFL’s deal with YouTube for Sunday Ticket last year, fans will have just one version of NFL RedZone to watch. The DirecTV version hosted by Andrew Siciliano was a casualty of the YouTube deal, leaving Hanson’s version as the sole edition standing on cable, satellite, and streaming. NFL RedZone is also available this season with a subscription to NFL+, which also includes NFL Network.
[Sportico]
