I was shocked as a non-hockey fan to see an ad of a car driving along the wall during active play. My eyes instinctively moved to the ad away from the puck. It was gross. As an NBA fan, I hate how ads keep getting crammed into every piece of equipment on the court, the jerseys, etc.
If anyone has clips of such horrible placements, please do share.
Humans aren't money-optimizing machines. And we don't watch (or play) sport to watch ads. Companies can try to optimize for profit, but too much focus on the bottom line corrodes just about anything else the company wants to do in the world. And ultimately, the most profitable companies are usually the ones who make a profit on the road of caring deeply about something else. (Eg, Steve Jobs' - who cared about making…
> "And we don't watch (or play) sport to watch ads." As long as we're talking about professional sports, players do definitely play them because of the ads. This is what pays pro athletes multimillion dollar salaries in the end - no matter what motivating lies they tell themselves (and get told by others), that is the practical purpose of the show they're putting on. Young athletes go through years of preparation, wo…
Slash athletes salary 10x and you’ll still have same talented athletes putting in great effort.
Most sportsmen are in it because they love competing and given activity. And lower salaries with less focus on advertising may make the activity itself better.
E.g. cycling where many pro races are shaped to be advertising-friendly first. The rest be damned.
> "And we don't watch (or play) sport to watch ads." As long as we're talking about professional sports, players do definitely play them because of the ads. This is what pays pro athletes multimillion dollar salaries in the end - no matter what motivating lies they tell themselves (and get told by others), that is the practical purpose of the show they're putting on. Young athletes go through years of preparation, wo…
Slash athletes salary 10x and you’ll still have same talented athletes putting in great effort. Most sportsmen are in it because they love competing and given activity. And lower salaries with less focus on advertising may make the activity itself better. E.g. cycling where many pro races are shaped to be advertising-friendly first. The rest be damned.
Yep. We do the things we do for lots of reasons. Do I write code for money? A bit, yeah. But I also love it. And I connect to a community through my work, and get esteem from people, and it helps me have an impact in the world. Money is important, but so are all those other things.
And I’m sure athletes are just as complex as I am.
A friend of mine is fond of saying that we have 10 reasons for doing everything we do. We know 5 of those reasons consciously and we’ll only admit 2 reasons out loud.
>It sucks that these huge sports leagues have little in the way of competition. Of course they do: people could spend their time doing (or watching) something else . Watch a TV show or movie, read a book, listen to some music, practice playing an instrument, cook some food, write a software program, go on a walk; there's endless things to do with your time besides watching sports. If you don't like the ads and the co…
I assume you’re similarly unbothered by googles domination of search because rather than searching for information you could be baking a cake?
Google clearly has a very dominant market position, but the recent events with Facebook / Meta have made me reevaluate my stance on supposed tech monopolies. A few years ago, Meta and Google looked like they had an unassailable duopoly on digital advertising, and there were many calls to break up both companies. I completely supported this movement. However, looking at the situation now, Facebook's position is not nearly as strong. TikTok has made a huge impact on the consumption side, and Apple and Amazon have emerged as strong players in the digital ads business. Essentially, the market seems to be working as intended. As for Google specifically, the company recognizes that their main product is nothing more than the "homework website" for the new generation. People are getting more and more of their information from places like TikTok or Reddit. Even if you use Google, it's becoming increasingly a conduit to a handful of destinations. Google's position in the market place doesn't seem as dominant as it once was.
You can build a super smart AI that can swap it out if you want. Sorry to spoil your perverse enjoyment there, but nobody will care about it. Everybody knows about ad blockers. Advertisers included! For things like logos on jerseys, it doesn't really matter. It only has to be slightly inconvenient for most people not to want to do it, which is good enough for most advertising purposes. Public places of viewing like s…
Yeah, they're so indifferent to ad blockers that they actively find ways to detect and circumvent them, to the point people have to make ad blocker blocker blockers. Google is so indifferent that they forced everyone to use restrictive new browser extension APIs just to cripple ad blockers.
Oh sorry yeah they definitely care. Not just Google, also publishers like NBA care because it dents their revenue. But even they know installing ad blockers is a reasonable human behavior and spending $ to get around them an accepted cost of doing business.
If anyone has clips of such horrible placements, please do share.
Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk3Jx1juRR8&t=1s Edit: https://twitter.com/NYIslanders/status/1589812414966468608 is a good example of ad creative being way too distracting
Thanks, this indeed looks like a horrible idea in general.
The digital boards in hockey can get really annoying even when they're working as intended. Animating them should definitely be banned and I wouldn't mind seeing the digital ads disappear entirely.
I've been a hockey fan my entire life and now I can't watch any NHL games anymore. I made two attempts at watching my team's first game of the season. I didn't make it past the halfway point. I just can't focus, and the ads were giving me headaches to boot.
I went through a stage of mourning for the first couple weeks of the season. Now I'm just at a loss of what to do with my time...
> "Like anything else, you're going to have your people that don't like it, that think it is difficult to watch. But over time, like everything else, people will get used to it, and we're not concerned at all whatsoever," Keith Wachtel, the NHL's chief business officer and executive vice president of global partnerships, told ESPN ahead of the season. Wow. That statement is dripping with contempt for their viewers. I…
Can't wait for the day someone invents a video ad blocker. Let's see if this guy will "get used" to that.
no one is going to flash the firmware on their TV to block ads.
It's interesting that no professional sports team has decided to go full pink as one of their primary uni colors. It would be an amazing branding opportunity. The closest I've seen is Miami Heat's Vice unis https://www.nba.com/heat/2021-heat-vice-uniform-collection .
Lots of teams in other sports have wear pink. Inter Miami in the US, Palermo FC in Sicily has had pink jerseys since 1907.
Didn't know about Palermo FC, thanks. MLS counts too, I guess, though no one really watches it yet.
I was shocked as a non-hockey fan to see an ad of a car driving along the wall during active play. My eyes instinctively moved to the ad away from the puck. It was gross. As an NBA fan, I hate how ads keep getting crammed into every piece of equipment on the court, the jerseys, etc.
As not a fan of professional sports, every time I see a sports game on TV, I feel like the game itself is secondary. It absolutely feels like an advertising show with the unimportant addition of people playing something.
Every show on commercial television is a carrier for advertisement - doubly so the evening news.