Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by yawn 1306 days ago
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.

4 comments

> My eyes instinctively moved to the ad away from the puck.

At some marketing meeting this was brought up and was promptly considers a feature, not a bug.

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.
Which sports, specifically? I watch football and rugby and while both have a lot of advertising (in stadia and on jerseys) TV coverage is still very clearly focussed on the sport itself
>and on jerseys

Precisely. I used to be an avid Arsenal fan, but now it seems that I would support "Emirates Fly Better". The fact that it's on every player's shirt one might say that "TV coverage is still very clearly focussed on the shirt itself". I do enjoy admitting, their website https://www.arsenal.com/ is rather tastefully done (I turned off all extensions to have a good look), though. And 'Visit Rwanda' doesn't seem to such be a bad thing, though I couldn't find an Emirates flight to there.

Shirt sponsors aren't not a particularly new thing, though. But I guess in the past Arsenal in particular had sponsors with slightly less controversial owners - iirc JVC and SEGA/Dreamcast weren't directly involved in any slave labour controversies or human rights abuses like the UAE is :)
And gay rights, which both the UAE and Rwanda (where gay sex is legal now, but just another case where the gov has changed the law to appeal to Western sensibilities but sentiments of the public have no changed) are terrible at.
Every show on commercial television is a carrier for advertisement - doubly so the evening news.
Over here in Europe that's now business as usual during soccer matches, and also biathlon, where a car follows the athletes on the billboard while they are skiing up a slope. However those are actual physical LED displays, not virtually inserted.
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

The janky overlays in that YouTube video are hilarious... Happening even when nobody's wearing cream colored clothing!
Thanks, this indeed looks like a horrible idea in general.