Advertisers' Big Bucks Changing the Face of Most Sports

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.

The one thing that distinguishes advertising for basketball in Puerto Rico from anywhere else is the message board above the backboard where you would expect the 30-second shot clock to be.

The board remains predominantly blank--until someone puts up a shot. Then one of three or four advertisements gets flashed upon the screen. Once, when a game was getting out of reach, I was taking side bets to whether "Lipton Iced Tea" or "Es Para Usted" would be the next message on the board.

So, this is the way the rest of the world mixes advertising with sport. How about sports in the United States?

Well, if you look carefully, we're not immune to commercial saturation either.

There is advertising in American sports everywhere, and it may take different forms--subliminal or otherwise--depending on the situation.

Take football. There has been more conversation in broadcast booths on the subject of marathon football games over the past three years than the issues of free agency, instant replay and turf toe combined.

Not surprisingly, no mention has been made for the reason of the length of football games--the amount of commercials which are sold for each telecast. Television hates self-criticism.

The USFL was the training ground for commercial saturation. Television timeouts were called not only after punts, extra points, and field goals, but even after kickoffs and turnovers.

The NFL started using a modified version of the USFL timeout patterns, but stopped after the games dragged--I mean dragged in the first three weeks of the 1985 season.

Take basketball. The NBA has the TV timeout problem solved. Each coach has seven full timeouts, and must call one per quarter. Not only that--a coach can use only three timeouts in the last two minutes of the fourth quarter.

Advertising during play is minimal here, though the funky sneakers that players like Micheal Jordan and Magic Johnson wear serve as ads.

There's Not Enough Room!

Take auto racing. Cars look like bicycle racers nowadays. Of course, there are the one or two main sponsors featured prominently on the car's rear quarter panel and hood.

But there is a kind of advertising peculiar to the NASCAR circuit. If you look carefully enough, you will see some 40 four-by-six-inch ads for oil, gas, rubber, and equipment crammed onto the front fenders of these racing machines. The stickers are the same on almost every other car, which may mean that these products are the "official" products of NASCAR.

The last blank car to win a NASCAR race was when Greg Sacks drove an all-white TRW research-and-development car to an upset victory in the Firecracker 400 on national television. Next week, of course, the TRW car was sporting corporate logos on its body.

Then there's the sponsor of the NASCAR circuit itself--a cigarette manufacturer. Though cigarette advertising is banned from the airwaves, the sponsorship of an entire event is a clever way of getting around the law.

I Want One Of Those!

Take hockey. Before 1980, only one team--the Minnesota North Stars--had advertisements on the boards like one sees at European figure-skating championships.

Then the Flyers' organization, having beaten the North Stars in the playoffs that year, picked up on the idea. Now, blank boards are a rarity; everyone seems to be doing it.

And then there are the lighted signs you see when you go into an arena. In the Boston Garden, the most prominent one is the "Bud Light" sign on the main scoreboard. Not surprisingly, But Light is sold at the concession stands.

Now you may have read about how in the last Boston-Quebec game, beer sales jumped every time there was a fight on the ice. Conversely, the lack of fighting on the ice may make people buy less beer.

So, at least in Boston, there is a strong economical argument against the deterrence of brawling, because of the presence of that sign on the scoreboard.

This means you won't see clean, Harvard-style hockey in the Boston Garden until next week's Beannot.

Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum

Take the Boston Marathon. Two years ago, Nike hung up a pair of giant-sized Sook Racers on the Hancock building. The advertising coup was completed when Ingrid Kristiansen won the women's race that year wearing Sock Racers. Sales of the Sock Racer soared.

And then there was the time that John Hancock took over the sponsorship of the marathon itself. It took the trouble of moving the finish line down Boylston St. from its traditional place in front of the Prudential Center and sticking it in front of the Hancock Building.

Take baseball. But wait, you say Baseball is the last bastion, the last place you ever want to see corporate advertising for TV.

Not this year. If you looked at every baseball uniform issued this year, you would have seen a little "Rawlings" on the sleeve. On the Mets' and Phillies' uniforms the logo is more unobtrusive, but its there. Baseball, captured by corporations What's the world coming to?

Sports advertising is fine when it leaves its sport alone. But there are times when it is inappropriate. Especially when it makes a travesty of the game.