I can’t stand the advertisements strategically placed on my favorite websites: ESPN and Facebook. Why do I care what Eli Manning and George W.’s IQs are? Do I even think to ask why they’re magically the same? Even though I’ve yet to click on the link, I know that it’s going to send me to page-after-page of flashy advertisements that have the Close button blended in to the background which if you were to miss it by as much as a pixel, you’ve just clicked on the ad itself – and then get sent to yet another page that will try to get money out of you! (breathe, 1…2…3 – way to go, pop-up blocker!).
Sad thing is that you can’t go to a baseball/basketball/football/[other sporting venue] game anymore and not be hounded by advertisements and messages from sponsors. Even Bud Walton Arena has a brand new border-marquee that wraps around the entire arena which occasionally has its sponsor displayed, which undoubtedly helped the University pay for the new high-tech addition: Game On Promotions; the Arvest Bank banner, and even the Bank of America banner. Two different banks. Can you even do that? I guess in the end BofA doesn’t really care about Arvest, seeing as how Arvest is pretty much the Pittsburgh Pirates to them – a year ago I would have compared Arvest to the Rays in this analogy.
The killer of sports’ purity: business. The very thing that drives a franchise and the sport will inevitably kill it. When John Henry and Tom Warner bought the Sox in ’02 they dumped millions of dollars in to Fenway; building new seats and then filling them, promoting new…promotions to keep the fans giving money back to the franchise. But you look at them and you see two championships, so who can complain? And seeing as how the Sox were in a 86-year drought before they came into Boston, Nobel Prize for Championship-making could definitely be in the conversation with the ownership (no, I’m not THIS much in love with the Warner/Henry duo). But now it’s gone too far, guys. All new uniforms for this season? Why? So fans can rebuy their favorite player’s jersey in a different color-scheme?
All over the country – admission prices are rising at a geometric rate. Then even if you can get into the game – you can’t afford more than two beers and a hot dog. The only souvenir you can get is a foul-ball. Because it’s free and that’s if the big burly dad in front of you mishandles the ball while trying to catch the ball with his bare hands because he couldn’t get the kid’s glove on in time. Then who goes to sporting events anymore?
If fans can’t afford to enter the game and buy their kids (or the kids in them) a t-shirt/jersey/hat of their favorite player where will the revenue come from? Who will support a franchise that pulls every cent possible?
Where’s our bailout?
