Did HBO just pull the greatest stunt in television broadcast history? Everyone was excited for the new Hard Knocks season, but they didn’t even get to watch it right away. This in-season installment of Hard Knocks followed around the Baltimore Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers. The 18-16 divisional matchup was exciting to watch, but people were even more excited about HBO’s coverage.

Ads that played on a loop for more than 17 minutes, unfortunately, ruined it. People naturally got angry at what was going on. So, they did the next best thing and took to X to share their dismay and expose HBO’s shenanigans. But before we get into that, let’s talk about the Hard Knocks for a bit.

This in-season of Hard Knocks is following around the most storied division in the NFL: the AFC North. The Baltimore Ravens, who are no longer the King of the North, have played and won against every franchise in their division so far, except the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Per a report from Yahoo!, “HARD KNOCKS: IN SEASON WITH THE AFC NORTH, will document the battle for the AFC North crown during the final six weeks of the NFL season and a playoff run for the division-winner and any AFC North Wild Card teams.”

Many thought that Lamar Jackson and Joe Burrow would be the main characters for the season, but the Bengals turned out to be a bust, despite putting up an amazing fight against their competition. But HBO did one better and followed around Russell Wilson and Justin Fields. However, we’ll still see Joe Burrow and Deshaun Watson in action.

Speaking about the Ravens and Steelers, the documentary will be incomplete without a focus on how Derrick Henry is shaping up with the Ravens. We can say the same about Justin Fields and the Steelers. Players like Ja’Marr Chase, Myles Garrett, TJ Watt, and a lot of others will also get the much-deserved reel time in the show. That is of course, if HBO allows people to watch it in the first place.

HBO’s Hard Knocks angers the football fans

One fan took to X and penned down, “Hard knocks…. Ad, Ad, Ad! What the hell!” Another one complained about the ads being played on a loop when they wrote, “@StreamOnMax I’m stuck in an ad loop on hard knocks?” This other fan made it look like the HBO platform was bugging out when they wrote, “Tying to watch hard knocks but literally stuck in a nonstop ad loop 😅.”

Another fan was tired after watching 18 minutes of ads and tried nearly everything to fix the stream. “I’m trying to watch Hard Knocks and the Max app won’t stop playing ads. It’s legit been 18 min. I’ve tried shutting it, force closing, restarting the firestick…nothing works 😂.” Suddenly, HBO turned people into tech support specialists.

This other fan had no choice but to ridicule HBO in his X post, “@hbomax, a simple two minutes worth of ads would’ve been fine. But I’ve been sitting here for 7 minutes with ads playing trying to watch Hard Knocks. This is ridiculous.”

Others thought they were hallucinating, and it became apparent when this one fan wrote, “Hard Knocks dropped and I’ve watched 27 ads in a row. Am I on acid?”

Well, that’s what football season does to people. Adrenaline, dopamine, and everything in between get charged up when we’re talking football. Seems like HBO is taking full advantage of the fans’ vulnerability. Guess people don’t have any other choice but to wait.