Is political campaigning getting out of hand? It may be so. But things get concerning when TV channels skip valuable moments from the game to show political campaigns. This happened in the week 4 TNF game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Carolina Panthers. People are not happy about it.

The TNF game in question was broadcasted on FOX, but it’s not the same case as Amazon Prime, which is streaming 16 regular season games this season. This is the presidential election year and Prime’s policies are pretty clear when it comes to what they want to show and what they don’t. There’s a long list of prohibited content on Prime, but here’s what caught our eye.

Thursday Night Football won’t see any political ads on Amazon Prime

Content prohibited on all ads includes, “Political, such as campaigns for or against a politician or a political party, or related to an election, or content related to political issues of public debate. During an election year we prohibit media products about a specific political party, issue, or candidate,” per Amazon Ads.

Lip-smacking food, bundling home and auto, iPhone exchanges, and automotive ads are all we see on Amazon Prime’s TNF coverage. While sports and consumerism go hand in hand, people are really not interested when political agendas and sports get lumped into one. But something that happened in Philadelphia had the Eagles’ fans fuming.

Posters of Kamala Harris were being put up in the city of Philadelphia where the election candidate was portrayed as “the official candidate of Philadelphia Eagles.” Fans were outraged and the Eagles had to intervene. They went as far as to say that these posters being put up were “counterfeits.”

The Eagles put out an official statement on September 2 on X, saying, “We are aware counterfeit political ads are being circulated and are working with our advertising partner to have them removed.” People don’t want their favorite sports team to pledge allegiance to any particular politician. Again, sports and politics have no business merging together.

But that doesn’t seem to be the case for the Cincinnati Bengals–Carolina Panthers game.

Will the broadcasting channels ever draw a line?

It was week 4 when the Cincinnati Bengals and the Carolina Panthers went head to head on September 29. The game was being broadcasted on Fox 28 Columbus and there was a Bernie Moreno ad playing that resulted in the kick of being missed. Even if a broadcasting channel is showing political ads, showing them back-to-back doesn’t make any sense.

Owner and editor of Awful Announcing, Ben Koo, took to X and shared his thoughts on the matter. He wrote, “If you thought political ads during sports was getting out of control, Sinclair owned@fox28columbusactually missed kickoff of the Bengals vs. Panthers game for a back to back Bernie Moreno ads.”

The video shows the ad and then abruptly switches to the game broadcast, leaving fans wondering what happened to the kick-offs. The news channels can do whatever they want with their broadcast, but they are making money with these affiliations. On top of this, the fans are also paying them money for a flawless experience. The network seems to have other priorities and sports fans are not on the top of that list.