If you went to see the U.S. Olympic hockey team play Harvard at Bright Center in November you would have noticed the players wearing conspicuous "Bud" logos on their helmets. You also might have noticed kids wearing their $39 Team USA hockey jerseys with a little "Dodge" logo on the front.
But from reading the expanded Team USA media guide, I got to appreciate just how much advertising the Olympic team was absorbing. In the media guide, the logos of all the corporations sponsoring the hockey squad were listed. Deodorant, candy bars, mouthwash, you name it-it was represented. It seemed as though a theoretically amateur effort was being swallowed up by corporate sponsorship--even as the games were being played.
Sponsorship is a way for many professional sporting teams to help pay the rent (especially stadium rent) and pay salaries which have, at times, gone through the proverbial roof.
But there are differing effects when the sponsorship mutates from commercials into advertising which goes right onto the field.
In many sports it is accepted, to the point that the advertiser is the main identifying point on the team. Take cycling, for example.
The advertising in cycling is big business, especially if you look at the Tour de France. Each of the 25 stages of the race has its own sponsor. Each of the special jerseys--polka-dot for mountains, red for catch sprints, and yellow for race leader--has its own sponsor as well. And, of course, there are the "official" products of the Tour. There are official soaps, cameras, toothbrushes, cereals, bike pedals, and even an official motor scooter.
The heavy influence on advertising in cycling stems from the fact that in France, cycling coverage is continuous, with no commercial breaks. A continuous six-hour broadcast every day for a month without commercials would be suicide for an American network, but the advertising keeps French TV going.
And Greg LeMond's victory in the Tour de France last year has spawned a generation wanting to wear the red, yellow and blue of the La Vie Claire-Look-Toshiba team--the advertising is synonymous with the team.
What's A Hitachi?
And so it is with soccer. Many European teams wear corporate logos on their jerseys along with their club symbol. As one who grew up watching the North American Soccer League, I could not understand what Borussia Moenchengladbach had to do with Hitachi.
Advertising is creative for soccer on European television. There are little five-second silent advertisements when the Michelin man rolls a tire across the screen or a toothpaste logo apears out of nowhere. These ads let the 45-minute halves proceed uninterrupted. Failing that, the ads can take up all of halftime instead of splicing 30-second commercials during action. After all, in soccer, the action is continuous and doesn't lend itself to TV timeouts.
One way that NBC and the NASL tried to "create" timeouts was to have somebody fall down and act injured on a prearranged signal. One time, however, nine players saw the signal and went down simultaneously. The idea was scrapped.
Es Para Usted?
In the Puerto Rican summer basketball league, advertising has been taken to a higher level.
When you enter an arena, you see ads all over the place. They are mostly concentrated on the court where the television can pick them up. For example, in Mayaguez, there is a Heineken logo in the foul lane. giving the overall effect of a conical beer can.
