Schedule-Release Videos May Represent the NFL's Next Big Media Moment The Seattle Seahawks' production captures '90s nostalgia By Dan Daley, Audio Editor Wednesday, May 28, 2025 - 7:00 am
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Not everything the NFL touches turns to gold, but, when it does, it gets very, very shiny. This month, the league oversaw the synchronized release of 32 team game-schedule videos, another off-season NFL event that's becoming almost as anticipated as the Super Bowl itself. Over the past 10 years or so, the NFL has turned its schedule release into a weeklong celebration.
It's not quite a Super Bowl yet, but the NFL's acorns have a way of growing over time. A 30-second spot during Super Bowl I in 1967 cost $37,500 (equivalent to about $340,000 today); compare that with the nearly $8 million on average for a 30-second spot advertisers shelled out during Super Bowl LIX this year in what has become almost as highly anticipated as the Big Game itself.
The Seahawks schedule-release video, Unbox the Action, recalls the hard sell of kids' toy commercials in the '90s.
As an event, the NFL Draft has a shorter history but an equally impressive trajectory. Originating in the 1930s as a backroom deal in smoky hotel ballrooms, it wasn't even broadcast until 1980. But, in 2019, the Nashville edition of the NFL Draft set a record as the highest-rated and most-watched Draft ever, with NFL, ESPN, ABC linear and digital channels combining to reach more than 47.5 million total viewers over the three-day, seven-round event. And more than 600,000 fans visited Nashville to celebrate the newest class of NFL rookies.
When's the Game? The phenomenon of the NFL club-schedule release looks to be the next iteration of the league's media Midas touch. This year's Schedule Release '25 (the event's official title still varies year to year, underscoring its relative newness) took place on May 14, broadcast live in primetime on NFL Network and ESPN2. And, like the Super Bowl's 30-second spots, the two- to six-minute videos have populated the internet ever since.
In terms of quality - comic and production values - over their decade of history, the videos can vary widely, with some conceived and executed by the teams' own content teams and others handled by outside production. For instance, the Cincinnati Bengals' in-house production was rather bare-bones: a microphone left on after a quick read of the team's 2025 schedule (and a reminder of what can happen when people forget that every microphone, everywhere, is always on).
Unboxing Day The Seattle Seahawks went the latter route this year, and its entry, Unbox the Action, touched on several generational tropes as the video completed the two major tasks of every release video: reveal the team's season schedule and tweak (gently or otherwise) the noses of each upcoming adversary. This one is all about getting action figures out of the box and into action but with the same breathless, CALM Act-violating urgency that toy commercials used in the 1990s to get kids to demand parents buy them whatever was advertised IMMEDIATELY! The Seahawks' entry nailed that vibe perfectly.
Seahawks' Kenton Olson: We thought [the schedule-release video] was an interesting way to connect to our 50th season, which we're celebrating this year.
Turtles and He-Men abound, as do Seahawks Marshawn Lynch and Devon Witherspoon, the latter recorded joyfully playing with a toy version of himself knocking around an anonymous L.A. Ram in an ad hoc production studio set up at the team's training facility.
It was, says Seahawks VP, Digital and Emerging Media, Kenton Olson, an option that we thought would resonate with our fans, as well as was an interesting way to connect to our 50th season, which we're celebrating this year.
DIY Budgets Unlike Super Bowl commercials and the Draft production, the schedule-release videos seem to relish their low-cost origins. Asked about budget levels that might seem appropriate for team checkbooks, Zeek Earl, who directed the Seahawks' spot for Packrat (a Seattle-area creative agency specializing in, among other things, brainspace curation and nostalgia fabrication ), stopped laughing only when guesstimates got down to the low five figures.
I honestly have no idea what common budgets are for these videos, he says. A lot are still done internally so that's a whole different type of resourcing. For example, I would speculate that most of the ones using videogames are pretty cheap because the actual production costs nothing; it's just the time spent in the game done by someone on staff or a freelance hire.
In the Seahawks video, cornerback Devon Witherspoon plays with a toy version of himself knocking around an L.A. Ram.
The L.A. Chargers got Minecrafty this year with their second consecutive videogame-themed schedule reveal; the Houston Texans pulled off a remake of the iconic Budweiser Super Bowl ad; the Tennessee Titans parodied the more contemporary pharmaceutical Skyrizi ad with an Rx for FSW (Football Season Withdrawal).
Long History, Short Timeframe Earl and Packrat initially pitched ideas to the Seahawks more than a decade ago, when Olson was manager of the team's digital media and the NFL and other leagues had just begun taking serious steps to engage on social media.
I ended up doing a kind of funny project with them called Seahawks versus Monsters,' back when teams were still trying to figure out what to do with social media, Earl recalls. There weren't any norms established yet. In the last few years, as the schedule-release videos have ramped up and become this massive competition, it's now almost the biggest video the social team puts out. They thought back to us: Oh, hey,
