Is It Baseball or Is It Advertising?

Watching a baseball game on TV has become extremely tedious because of the proliferation of advertising. Someone recently mentioned that they had tuned into a commercial and a baseball game broke out.

A lot of the ads are so subtle that your conscious mind does not even realize that it’s being sent a message from some sponsor. If you don’t believe me, the next time you watch a game, pay closer attention and you will be amazed at what you’ll discover.

To start off with look at the changes at the names of the various ball parks. Many have adopted the name of some sponsor. What happened to Cominskey Park? It changed its name to US Cellular Field. Why? Money. We have Ameriquest Field in Texas, Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay, SAFECO Field in Seattle, Comerica Park in Detroit and that’s just the American League. You can counter my argument by pointing out those two National League ballparks; Wrigley Field and Busch Stadium, for years have been named for a product. It’s no coincidence that the owners of those ball clubs share the same name as their product.

When you watch a game notice how many times the camera angle always captures an ad in the background. One of the most used angles is from behind the pitcher. Here you can see the pitcher, the batter, the catcher and umpire – the focal point of the game. What you might have become oblivious to is the ads that are on the backdrop of home plate. Where else could you find an ad in that picture? Think of how many corporate logos are on the uniforms and equipment that’s worn by the ball players. What about the hat? The glove? The shoes? The jerseys? What about the catcher’s equipment?

You might not notice them but I’m sure some youngster is picking up all this information subconsciously. Doesn’t this manifest itself at some later time when your ten year old is at some sporting goods shop and asks if he could buy a specific hat? Why does he choose it? It just may be because he was influenced by the looks of it or because a certain player wore it.

Being from Boston, most of the games I watch emanate from Fenway Park, one of the last bastions of baseball purism in America. The ballpark I grew up with had its share of corporate sponsors and ads festooned around the park but never behind home plate. Since the new ownership took over, ads have multiplied with each passing year. The one thing that they haven’t done yet is to sell the Fenway name to some corporation. What is the famous corporate landmark that’s near Fenway that’s become synonymous with the area?
The answer is the big Citgo sign that sits atop a building in Kenmore Square that’s visible from the ballpark.

Look at your television screen and you’ll find many broadcasts have adopted the usage of an information box in one of the extreme corners of the screen. In this box you’ll have information such as the score, the inning, how many are out and the pitch count. If you pay closer attention what you’ll also notice in many instances is the box has the name or logo of some corporate sponsor.

Baseball is a sport that lends itself readily for commercials. It has a natural stoppage after each half inning whereby you can be shown as many ads that can be fit in a two minute time frame. If you have a one minute ad you’ll see two, thirty second ads will give you four and so on. If for some good fortune you were watching a well pitched game that was moving along fairly quickly, hardly the norm these days, you would at the minimum be exposed to thirty six minutes of ads (4 per inning times 9). How many times during the course of the game do you have a pitching change? Well you guessed it, with each stoppage they fit in more ads. So on average you’re probably watching at least 40 minutes worth of ad time.

If that weren’t enough pay attention how many times during the course of an inning the announcers are doing these 10 to twenty second spots. It seems lately that they are spending more time doing these short commercials than they are discussing the game.

I thought I would give myself a break from all of the insanity and decided to listen to the game on radio. Lo and behold I found it to be just as bad. The only relief I get from radio is that I’m not visually bombarded with the signage.

I was astounded by what I noted in listening to WEEI’s broadcast of Sunday’s Red Sox/Oriole game. Here’s what I noted through seven innings;

There were ads for 28 different companies touting products mainly geared toward the male audience from Azek Trim Boards to Village Automotive.

The radio broadcast like the TV had the typical ads between innings but what was interesting were the little subtleties that occurred during the game. Here are some I caught and jotted down;

Just as the game was starting they notified the listeners of the players who were out do to injury by saying “the injury report is brought to you by Fallon Community Health.”

They gave the starting lineup by saying, “the starting nine is brought to you by D’Angelo.”

They explained what the teams had to do to win by saying, “the delivery of the game is brought to you by UPS.”

The one that really killed me was the following just as the game was about to start. The announcer gave the time and temperature at game time and then added that,” the time and temperature was brought to me by Pella.”

A few inning later with Manny Ramirez at bat, I was reminded that ‘the giant part of the lineup was up and that was brought to me by Giant Glass.”

Whenever they had to go to the bullpen to change a pitcher, I was informed that, ‘the call to the bullpen was brought to me by Verizon Wireless.”

I might have missed some others but there were a few that were linked to contests in nature. One was the ‘Off the Wall Contest” brought to us by the Mass State Lottery. From what I could gather was that if a ball was hit off the wall in that part of the inning the contestant selected would win a prize from the sponsor.

The other contest brought to us by GMC was in the seventh inning. If seven runs were scored in the seventh inning then some lucky contestant would win a GMC vehicle.

I imagine there were others such as the player of the game being sponsored by someone. But all in all one can see that it’s become very tedious to listen and watch a game. How much more can they squeeze into the time they have? How much more can the announcers do? They have become corporate whores.

This article was brought to you by Lino’s Line.