Superbowl ads vs "The Big Game"

The Game Room
1

Superbowl tv ads commonly use the words “The Big Game” instead of saying the words “Super Bowl”. This was famously parodied last year in a Seth Rogen commercial for Samsung:

But after thinking about it, this makes no sense. Not just in a “that trademark law is crazy” way, but in a “wait, it clearly can’t be true” way.

Example: the pre-announcement of this year’s Victorias Secret superbowl commercial (http://vsallaccess.victoriassecret.com/2015/01/21/look-whos-coming-to-the-big-game/ – link is actually safe for work, no lingerie in it)

  1. Although the video says “The Big Game” instead of “superbowl”, all the other words on the page clearly say super bowl. So why is it ok to say super bowl in words but not in video?
  2. Victorias Secret is actually paying $4.5 million to show that 30 second commercial during the superbowl. Surely, part of that $4.5 million includes licensing the right to say the name of the TV show you’re showing your commercial on, no?

Point #1 particularly confuses me. Victorias Secret apparently can’t use the word “superbowl” in the commercial (which they are paying to show in the superbowl) but they can use the word superbowl dozens of times all over their web page?

Anybody able to explain the apparent contradiction?

2

Let’s move this over to the Game Room.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

3

This is a factual question about us trademark law. Don’t move it to the game room. Keep it in GQ.

4

  1. Having it in the Game Room does not preclude factual answers.

  2. Since the question of how trademark applies to the Super Bowl has been discussed here before, I think you are more likely to get a good answer here.

If it turns out that you don’t, I’ll consider moving it back.

5

The terms of the license aren’t necessarily all or nothing. They may have chosen to use “big game” in some places even when they were licensed to use Super Bowl. They may have also shot the video to be used in additional places where the terms of the licensing didn’t cover the trademark.

The NFL controls the trademark and the licensee uses it as they see fit within the allowable uses.

6

Nitpick: There is no such thing as “superbowl”; one word, whether capitalized or not. The NFL trademarked thingy is the Super Bowl; two words, each capitalized.

7

I’m not a trademark expert but I’m not aware of an actual court case on the subject. I suspect that most avoid saying “Super Bowl” and instead use terms like “the big game” just because the NFL is extremely trigger-happy with their cease-and-desist letters. I’d like to see a company actually take them on and go to court over the issue, but I doubt we’ll ever see a company decide it’s worth it.

8

Didn’t the NFL try to trademark “The Big Game” as well, for advertisement control reasons, only to be told that the Cal-Stanford football game had been using that name since long before there was ever a Super Bowl?

Besides - advertisers could just use other names. I have seen “Football Final” and “Pro Football Championship” used in ads, usually for contests where the prize was a trip to the game.

As for “saying it but not displaying it,” I have seen something similar; on an episode of the Clerks animated TV series, they could say “Little League”, but all of the signs had to say “Junior Big League”.