I’ve spent the past two years behind the scenes at Business of Sport, helping shape the episodes you watch. Now I’m putting some of my own thoughts on the page, focused on something we don’t cover often: American sport. As an English fan, I’ll be exploring how its leagues work, how they make their money, and what draws people like me into them. And hopefully bringing you into it along the way. I’ll be dropping new articles every Thursday.
My interest in American sport started with a mate at school who was already obsessed with the NFL. Sunday nights became a ritual. From 6pm (usually that’s when the early kickoffs start in the UK) we’d be glued to our screens as I gradually learnt how the game worked. More often than not, we were watching NFL RedZone.
NFL RedZone is sort of like a highlights show in real time, combining live look-ins, replays and split-screen coverage. Its name comes from the “red zone”: the area inside the opponent’s 20-yard line. It prioritises scoring opportunities and significant moments, rather than showing every play of every game. Scott Hanson, the energetic host, guides you through the admittedly confusing dance that is an NFL Sunday.
Pass interference, false starts, blitzes and sacks were all terms that would have gone right over my head without Hanson’s help.
What mattered was that I did not have to choose a team before I had a reason to watch. Moving between games gave me a crash course in the teams and their players, and I developed those attachments as I went. By the time I started watching full games, I already had reasons to care about them.
RedZone was not asking me to commit to one team or gamble my evening on one fixture. It was offering me a Sunday’s worth of football, with someone else deciding where my attention should go. I could arrive knowing very little and still have a reason to stay.
The lack of adverts was another part of the appeal. “Seven hours of commercial-free football,” Scott Hanson would declare as the games kicked off. For us, used to watching Premier League matches without advertising breaks during play, that mattered. The stop-start nature of American football took some getting used to, but RedZone could take us to the action elsewhere rather than leave us watching adverts. It was not just a pleasant extra. It was part of what kept me watching.
That commercial-free promise has since changed. RedZone tested advertising in 2024 and expanded it in 2025, using split-screen adverts that kept the football visible. That does not erase what makes RedZone appealing. But when the lack of interruptions helped draw me in, their arrival raises a question: how much can you change the experience before you weaken one of the reasons people watch?
As we have often discussed on Business of Sport, particularly when talking about rugby and cricket, commercial growth can help build a more secure future for a sport. But RedZone raises an interesting question about how we measure that success. The money a programme brings in today is one part of its value. Its ability to turn a curious viewer into a regular fan is another.
In my case, RedZone’s value extended beyond the Sunday evenings I spent watching it: it helped turn me into someone who wanted to watch full games as well. The question is not whether the NFL should make money from the programme, but how it accounts for that wider role. Attracting new fans is itself a commercial opportunity, even when the return is less immediate than selling an advertising slot.
Looking back, RedZone did not make me understand American football overnight. It made me interested enough to come back the following Sunday, and the understanding followed. Perhaps that is the lesson for sports trying to attract a new audience: you do not have to explain everything before giving someone a reason to care.
Media section:
Every week I’ll be dropping a few videos with these posts. Things I’ve found fun that could help you gain a small gateway into understanding American sports. Here are my first few:
(NFL won’t allow it to be watched here but click on the video and it’ll take you to Youtube)
Loved this Robbie excited for next week 🏈⚾️🏀