In the fall of 2001, a nearly 30-year-old Eric Shanks was dispatched to Italy to acquire Serie A rights and stand up an entirely new sports network under Sky Italia. When he arrived, one of the companies Fox had acquired, Telepiu, gave Shanks — who, at the time, couldn’t speak a lick of Italian — a tour of how they covered soccer. Shanks found a half-dozen analysts sitting around folding tables and watching the games on TV, with an MC figuratively passing the mic.
“One guy would raise his hand, and the [host] would look across the room and he’d be like, ‘OK, now we’re going over to Giovanni in Palermo.’ And then Giovanni would start talking. Then another guy would raise his hand. ‘OK, now we’re going over to Mario, he’s in Milano,’” Shanks recalled. “I’m like, ‘What the f--- is going on?’ And then, ‘Oh! That’s the live look-in.’”
Shanks immediately saw the opportunity: “This is what the NFL needs, this jumping around to all the best moments live.”
When Shanks joined DirecTV amid its negotiations with the NFL in 2003, he sought to include a clause that granted the satellite TV provider the right to live look-ins across NFL games. NFL RedZone went live in 2005.
David Hill, then Fox Sports’ chairman, said the plan worked largely because of the combination of director Jonathan X, previously a technical director for sports on Fox and HBO, and producer James Crittenden.
“We paired them with Andrew Siciliano, because it was really a radio show,” said Hill, referring to the host’s L.A. sports radio background. “We kind of did it because it was cool. … But then we discovered at the end of the season that all these people were watching it, and suddenly RedZone became huge.”
NFL Network mimicked the strategy with its own RedZone program, hosted by Scott Hanson, several years later. Though the original was put to bed after YouTube acquired Sunday Ticket for the 2023 season, its legacy is undeniable. Hans Schroeder, executive vice president and COO of NFL Media, said Shanks had just the right mix to pull it off.
“Eric is just incredibly knowledgeable. He knows the product, he knows what’s going to make the experience a great one for fans. And he knows the business side in an incredibly deep way,” Schroeder said. “To have both of those things as sort of that overall leadership as a sports executive, it’s a really incredible skill set.”
