I don't see this particular version lasting long. I can see SOME advertisements. Smaller, and not while the play is going on, and dropped well before the QB hikes the ball.
During timeouts, pregame, post game, halftime, it's ok. But if they leave those up there while the play is on, wow, it'll be a PR bloodbath.
Going to the games is a small piece of their revenue. They mess with the TV experience, and it'll risk a big problem. The NFL could literally give away their tickets for free and still easily and with a lot of room, turn a profit.
At this point they have to realize it's tv revenue that pays the bills, and so if there is any desire to force people into the seats by making the TV broadcasts less appealing it's hubris and playing with fire. I don't think the NFL is that stupid, we'll see.
TV revenues pay all of the players salaries and about 50+ million more per team. I'm pretty sure each team pulls home about 200 million per year just from TV. Or maybe that was going to be what they get by the end of the current TV deal.
They screw up that cash cow, and the league will have problems.
This could be a step too far, and if they don't do it right, this can easily help put out that fire the public has for the NFL. This would be one of those things Cuban warned the NFL about.
But that said, I think they are just testing it out, and trying to see what they can get away with without pissing off the fans. So they'll probably tweak it here or there to get it so it isn't so intrusive, but they can have that additional revenue stream. But it could get ugly until they figure all that out.
Also has it been confirmed that this is going to be in the regular season? They could just be using the preseason as a test and maybe in future years after the kinks have been worked out, introduce it in the regular season.
I'm pretty sure I've seen this before, but I think they just had a small Toyota instead of plastered all over the field.
