Much has been made of last weekend’s Dolphins-Chiefs NFL playoff game airing exclusively on Peacock. Outkick host and founder Clay Travis has a different spin on it.
On OutKick: The Show Monday, Travis admitted he already had a subscription to Peacock. He also has subscriptions to other major services such as Netflix and Paramount+. But Clay made a point that if the NFL is going to be paid money by streaming companies to broadcast games exclusively on their service, fans deserve to watch them in their entirety without commercials.
“If you’re going to put a game on a streaming service, and you are going to make me pay to sign up for that streaming service, there should be no commercials,” Travis said. “The entire premise of there being commercials during sports broadcasts is the commercials exist so you and I can watch them ‘for free.'”
Clay pointed out that if you pay for a service like Hulu or Netflix and pay the normal rate, you get commercial-free programming. So why is there an exception the NFL?
“If you pay the normal rate, there are no commercials,” he said. “You can pay less and they will put the commercials in. But if you pay the normal rate, you are paying to not have commercial breaks. You just get to watch your program.”
“We’ve got to fight this, and we have to fight it now,” Travis continued. “If you want to put games on Peacock, Paramount or Amazon or anywhere else, those should all be commercial-free.”
Travis clarified that he meant strictly the full-screen ad breaks. He didn’t say announcers couldn’t do ad reads or have on-screen placements. It is ridiculous in his opinion to expect football fans to sign up for streaming and still sit through commercials.
“This is a big deal to me, and I think the precedent is important” Travis added. Fans need to line up and fight against this. If they’re going to charge you effectively pay-per-view, there shouldn’t be commercials during the broadcast period.”
“The general proposition here needs to be, no commercial breaks at all if we are having to pay as much for these games as we actually are,” the Outkick host concluded.
