Prepare For Advertising Overload If NFL Season Takes Place In 2020
BOSTON (CBS) -- Nobody is better at making money than the National Football League. Generating millions upon millions of dollars during a global pandemic, however, is quite the challenge.
As such, if the NFL is able to hold games this fall, you can expect to see a heavy dose of corporate influence in the broadcasts.
CBS Sports' Jonathan Jones published the first in a series of stories about what to expect in the 2020 NFL season. Jones conducted "dozens of interviews with team and league sources over the past month" for the project. And in this story, the implementation of relaxed advertising rules took center stage.
"Team sources agree that, in order to deliver value to those [in-stadium] sponsors, the league must relax its advertising rules for this unique season," Jones wrote. "One rule in particular is the so-called '40-foot rule,' which mandates teams cannot have local advertising in the space 40 feet above field level. (For context, the goalposts top out at 35 feet.)"
Some idea Jones floated included ads on the walls surrounding the field, sponsored tarps covering empty seating sections in the lower bowl, ads on the net behind the goal posts, and "in-stadium virtual advertising that could be rotated throughout a game."
Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio saw this story and took it one step further, suggesting that the NFL may seek to put advertisements on players' jerseys and/or helmets.
"At a time when sports fans will be starved for sports, will anyone complain about, for example, the placement of ads on uniforms? Or how about a green-screen decal on the helmet that becomes a rotating advertisement during close-up shots?" Florio wrote. "As the NFL tries to turn a negative into a positive, one very lucrative positive could be an opportunity to jump with both feet onto what had long been regarded a third rail for the NFL and embrace a proliferation of advertising, all in the name of replacing the revenue lost via the absence of fans."
Ads on jerseys has long been a touchy subject in the four major North American sports. The NBA finally crossed that bridge three years ago, selling sponsorship patches on team jerseys for games, and the league has not been adversely affected.
The NFL allowed for teams to sell space to advertisers on their practice jerseys more than a decade ago, a change that was significant but did not impact the league on Sundays. Now in an unprecedented situation where generating revenues will require creativity, that change may be coming this fall.
