Monday, August 31, 2009

Not getting it.

I won't say outright that I don't understand sports sponsorship. I suppose in some instances there are links between products and the sport that make sense. So slathering your company's name all over a stadium has some efficacy. Budweiser and baseball makes sense for me. I suppose Canon cameras and the Yankees add up. But Citibank and the Mets? Naw, that I can't fathom. I'm not thinking about my checking account while I'm at the ball park. And I can't for the life of me imagine saying, "I think I'll put $25K in such-and-such a bank because they sponsor a Venezuelan shortstop who can go to his left."

I just went onto the United States Tennis Association's website, I'm not sure why and listened in to about 30 seconds of US Open Tennis radio. The first commercial I heard was for Citizen's watches: "the official timekeeper of the US Open."

Now I know I'm stupid.

I always thought that one of the joys of tennis is that's it's played without a clock. In tennis (Am I getting this right?) you win when you score a requisite number of points. Time has nothing to do with it, ergo, why an official timekeeper?

Tennis having an official timekeeper is like football having an official tablecloth.

2 comments:

Laura said...

That sponsorship makes no sense, it is even kind of amusing that someone sold the US Open that one.

And why again should Lance Armstrong be associated with Radio Shack?

Teenie said...

I think it's a checked picnic motif.