Thirsty on a recent April afternoon, I stopped into a sports pub. The place was empty save for a British ex-pat and a drunk American. The former was glued to the TV watching an English Premier League match and the latter was annoying him with typical American questions about soccer.
It was pretty boring stuff.
But then I heard my fellow countryman ask a rather peculiar question. “Who are you pulling for, Samsung or Fly Emeritus?” Because the two teams in question were Chelsea and Arsenal, extremely popular teams across the pond, the Englishman looked at him as if he”d said, “Tea sucks and the Queen shaves her beard.” Now, I”m not here to debate soccer and the place it holds in America, but it certainly opened my eyes to a growing trend. Corporate sponsorship has hijacked professional sports and shoved it down our collective gullets. And it goes well beyond Europe.
By my count, there are 68 North American stadiums named after major corporations (Gillette Stadium, Tropicana Field, Quicken Loans Arena to name just a few). Add to that the hundreds of logos scattered throughout every venue and to watch a professional sporting event is to be strapped in a seat with your eyelids pried open a la Clockwork Orange.
Admittedly, I have no idea what financial logistics are involved with operating a sports franchise, but I ask you, what has this ambush marketing done for the fans? Where is our slice of the pie for being such willing participants? It certainly hasn”t made going to a game any cheaper. In fact, tickets to major sporting events have been in a steady climb for the past 10 years. And what do you get for celebrating the purity of athleticism beneath the yellow glow of a McDonald”s arch? A free key chain if you”re among the first two thousand fans in attendance. I call shenanigans.
I recently listened to a radio broadcast of a Major League baseball game. During the first half-inning, I counted 10 sponsorship plugs in a four-minute span. Mind you, these were not the commercials between innings (I realize radio is free and therefore some ads are necessary) but rather they were casually tossed into the live action commentary. For instance, the pitching matchup was sponsored by a pizza chain, the umpire alignment by a law firm and the defensive alignment by a local power company. Even the national anthem had a sponsor. I thought I might hear the song start, “Oh say can you see? If not, come on down to Leonard”s Optical. We”ll have you watching o”er the ramparts in less than an hour while you wait!” Why not? Nothing else seems to be sacred. We are one fiscal-quarter loss from learning that Tampax is the official tampon of the Baltimore Orioles.
Not even collegiate sports are safe from marketing”s pervasive reach. The Allstate Sugar Bowl? The Chick-fil-A Bowl? Most of these college teams are publicly funded universities with minimal overhead. Heck, the boosters carry the burden of paying the players. So why do I have to be hassled with insurance? What does a chicken sandwich have to do with a football game? Could the University of Tennessee not afford their uniforms for the 2005 Cotton Bowl, prompting the 2006 AT&T Cotton Bowl? I doubt it.
The bottom line is that we, as fans, are force-fed a particular product or service, not based on merit or benefit, but solely on which company has the deepest pockets. Simply put, the bottom line is the bottom line and nobody asked us if it was OK.
In American football, the fans in attendance are often referred to as the 12th man because of the role they play in rooting for the home team. But go to an Eagles” game at the clumsily named Lincoln Financial Field and wonder … would the team owners rather you bleed green or spend it?
