I’M SICK OF ALL THE SPONSORSHIP I SEE EVERYWHERE!!!
SOMEONE HELP ME NOT EXPLODE!!!
I was ok with all of the banners at sports games, but it then moved onto the jerseys and headsets and towels. Then the bowls became sponsored, and the arenas themselves. And then the field. Then to crappy halftime shows where someone has to make a football into a hole the size of a lemon from 50 yards away to win a million dollars. Well, last night was the absolute last straw for me as Texas was awarded the trophie for winning the Rose Bowl…which went something like this (not exactly this please don’t sue me ADT)
COME ON, it has gone too far for me. Will people ever put their foot down? I don’t really know what can be done, it’s not like people will ever complain or stop watching the sports. I’m just suprised the entire screen doesn’t have popup ads and banners all over it yet.
I can’t believe that the money is required to put these events on or build an arena - they were all fine 20 years ago without all of this stuff.
I propose a list of Corporations that sponsor events in an annoying way. We should boycott these companies until they apologize and promise NEVER to do it again.
This thread is for sale. Please email me at bobob555@yahoo.com to purchase banner ad space.
I’ll admit straight away I’m not really a watcher of sports events; I’m one of those just sort- of- interested- in- the- final- outcome- of- the- match- if- the-team-is-from-around-here. (Whew, so many dashes…)
Anyway, even though I don’t really watch sports, I do watch the news and other snippets of sports on TV and have been amazed at how sponsorship has exploded over the years. It’s really, really, really in-your-face and impossible to miss. :rolleyes:
“Verizon Wireless Amphitheater” just doesn’t flow off the tongue well. :rolleyes:
The sheer overkill of sponsorship these days is a turn-off. Granted, if a company pays for something in the way of sponsorship then sure, make sure they’re given proper acknowledgement for it. But to splash it all over the place and integrate the sponsorship angle into every.single.aspect of the event is just overkill and to me, cheapens (strange choice of words, I know - but the best I can come up with to describe it :rolleyes: ) the event as a whole. Would you like some football with your four-hour commercial? :rolleyes:
“The fabulous Team A, after years and years of work, finally gets to the top to play an unbeatable team, this is going to be a great match-up and the stakes are high and did you know you could save a ton of money by logging on to Lizard.com and getting an instant quote on your car insurance? Lizard.com, I said, and please shift your heads slightly to the left to admire the hundred-foot banners splayed across the stadium, Lizard.com, proud sponsors of the Lizard Bowl at Lizard Stadium…Mr. Lizard himself expected to be here to present the Lizard.com award to the winning team…”
I’ve been meaning to pit this anyway, but I might as well do it here since it fits.
Since Dan Snyder took over, he’s made the Washington Redskins into the most profitable sports franchise in the world. However, he sold the team’s soul. Here’s the worst example I can think of.
Last year, Popeye’s was the Official Chicken of the Washington Redskins. I guess they lost the bid to KFC this year, because now KFC is the Official Chicken of the Washington Redskins. Not to be outdone, Popeye’s now makes the Official Chicken Sandwich of the Washington Redskins. Please to not forget that INOVA is the Official Hospital of the Washington Redskins, and that Sprint is the Official Cellular Provider of the Washington Redskins.
I’m going to go puke which, by the way, is the Official Bodily Fluid of the Washington Redskins.
Don & Mike were talking to a guy about this one day. He’d written an article.
They had a clip from a pre-game show that went, “the McDonald’s scoreboard is brought to you by AAMCO”. (or whatever the companies were).
Very funny.
Every second of the broadcast was brought to you by something.
It’s an easy rant, but necessary.
This year, ESPN had something called (like) “The Ford Motors Conference Championship” where the best performing conference in the bowl games won some award.
Of course us bozo’s at work were discussing it, but one them other bozo’s asks, “why are they even having that?”
I told him, “they just invented one more thing so they could have someone sponsor it.”
It’s an interesting comparison to the only college national championship I attended. The college I went to hosted the Women’s Hockey Frozen Four a few years ago. It was held in a publicly owned arena which (thank god) has not sold naming rights. Also, the NCAA required that all the local advertising be covered. There was no advertising on the boards at all. There were NCAA logos, Frozen Four logos, and each school had it’s logo on the boards. It was pretty cool, although we counted somthing like 150 NCAA logos throughout the building.
One of our sports and special events venues used to be called the Boise State University Pavilion (BSU Pavilion for short). It had a nice ring to it. Now it’s called …
You seem to be under the assumption that the reason behind the existence of these sporting teams is entertainment, physical fitness, and a sense of community. You are sadly mistaken.
Making money is the primary reason for the existence of all these teams. The game on the field is a quaint (but apparently still necessary) sideline to the main purpose of modern sporting teams. Make no mistake—if the owners of sporting teams could get you to sit inside a advertisement-saturated stadium or watch TV advertising for four hours without actually showing you a game of football, they’d do it in a heartbeat.
Just like television, sport is not selling entertainment to the viewer; it is selling the viewer to the advertisers.
Now, you might say, “Sure that’s true of pro sports, but college football should be different.”
And to that, i say, “Sure, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.”
The arena where our local minor league hockey team plays, when it was first built, was officially called “The First Union Arena”, naming rights having been bought by the bank (now Wachovia). Unofficially, however, the arena was referred to as “The F.U. Arena.”
William Wrigley owned the team and the building at the time. He got to name the Stadium whatever he wanted. He did not write a $250 million check just to slap his name on the facade for 10 years, or until the chewing gum company went bankrupt, whichever comes first.
I comforted myself by eating Pringles® while watching the Tostitos® Fiesta Bowl and talking on my LG cell phone while watching the Nokia® Sugar Bowl.
At the current rate of sponsorship growth, we will soon be hearing play-by-play commentary peppered with advertising. I can just imagine the following dialogue:
Commentator #1: “Clemens checks on the runner at first…and here’s the Hershey® two one pitch. Strike two!”
Commentator #2: “Roger was really on the Maker’s Mark® with that pitch.”
Commentator #1: "Clemens looks again at the runner. And we have our first Dirt Devil® throw to first tonight.
Our local, LOCAL broadcasts of highschool basketball does something like this. I haven’t listened in a while, but it used to be things like “The State Farm 3-point leaderboard” and “The starting lineups, brought to you by McDonalds.”
This past year there was a proposal from some company to buy the naming rights to the Ohio State-Michigan football game. If I remember correctly the deal would pay approximately 500,000 dollars per year to each University. As one could expect there was a howl of outrage about this and it was not enacted. My perspective from an OSU student was that the university could sure as heck use the money. State funding is being cut like a foreskin at a bris and tuition has risen by approximately 15-20% since I started school three years ago.
500,000 dollars per year would provide enough money for approximately 30-35 full ride scholarships. If they gave that money out as partial scholarships it might mean the difference for 100 people between going to OSU or going to a local community college. Yet the idea was shot down becuase of a name that no one would care about and no one would refer to outside of perhaps sportscasters. If you ask me 100 people getting a great education is worth a lot more than the trouble it takes to ignore some stupid name.
In fact I am going to go ahead and share another anecdote. The arena that the basketball team, hockey team and I am sure a couple other sports teams play at is officially called the Value City Arena at the Schottstein Center. Now everyone and their brother refers to it at the Schottstein Center. When I first heard the name “Value City Arena” I had to be told that it was in fact the Schottstein Center.
The stadium where the football team plays is called the Horseshoe becuase it used to be horseshoe shaped but no longer is. If some company wants to come and pay the University to rename the stadium “The Horseshoe at Stupid Company park” or something like they did with Comisky park in Chicago I would be all for it. Those naming rights are probably worth millions and that translates into a couple hundred people attending OSU that otherwise couldn’t. Everyone and their brother would ignore the name change and keep calling it the Horseshoe so whats the harm?
That’s not what ArchitectChore is talking about. Major league and college teams have done that for some time, and it’s been discussed ad nauseam in this thread: different aspects of the non-play-by-play coverage of the game are sponsored. What ArchitectChore is talking about is different plays in the game itself, like a slam dunk or a play-action pass, being sponsored.
treis has a good point about college sponsorship. The same story (of budget cutting etc) is playing itself out at the University of Arizona (and Arizona State and Northern Arizona) except without the sponsorship offers. I’m sure it’s going down everywhere else too.
I took a photo inside the Astros’ new ballpark a few years back, during the 7th inning stretch (when fans sing “Deep In The Heart Of Texas”).
Prominently featured is the giant scoreboard, proudly emblazoned with the words: Enron Field.
I’m thinking of blowing it up to an 11 x 17 and framing it. Should become a treasured collector’s item.
