At least one NFL owner is willing to reduce the number of commercials on league TV broadcasts.
Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti says he thinks fans can get inundated with commercials, and that may be hurting the league’s TV ratings.
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that nobody wants to see two minutes of commercials, come back, kick the ball and then go to a minute-and-a-half of commercials,” Bisciotti said last week. “I’ve thought that was absurd since I was 20 years old.”
The question is whether fewer commercials would mean less money. Bisciotti believes it would be the players, not the owners, who would have the biggest problem with that, as a reduction in revenue would result in a lowered salary cap.
“We’ve got to figure that out,” Bisciotti said. “Again, if you change that, it could mean a reduction in income, but that’s going to hit the players more significantly than it’s going to hit the owners.”
Realistically, neither the players nor the owners are going to agree to reducing commercials if it would cost them money. But perhaps reducing commercials wouldn’t actually reduce revenues because it would lead to more people watching the game, and therefore the commercials that remain would become more valuable. Or perhaps there are other ways to increase revenues during game broadcasts through sponsorships that don’t bring the game to a halt like commercial breaks do. Bisciotti’s idea deserves more thought.