The NHL Will Test Ads On The World Cup Jerseys, Let's Try To Have A Reasonable Discussion About This
Before we get started here, the only advertisements dealing with the World Cup of Hockey that we should be worried about are these goddamn commercials.
If the goal for these spots are to get everybody excited for the World Cup just for the sole reason that these ads will finally be over with, well then mission accomplished. But back to the issue at hand here. The jersey ads. Now here’s the thing with jersey ads in the NHL; they are inevitable. And if you think you’ll never live to see the day when ads start popping up on your favorite team’s sweater, well then you better start working on dying in the next few years. By “monitoring fan reaction” to these ads, it just means that they’ll be determining whether they can go full Euro trash like this within the next few seasons…
… which is a fucking disgrace to humanity and will never happen in North America. Or if they’ll just dip their toes in the water with a little patch on the front for a while. Which is much more realistic and much more subtle and there’s really nothing at all to hate about a tiny little patch. Because think about it for a second here.
This is what it looks like to watch a game on TV these days. There are ads everywhere. Every board pane is filled up. You’ve got an ad superimposed on the glass. And every team usually has at least 4 advertisements in the neutral zone. Unless you want every square inch of the ice surface to be covered in ads, it appears that jersey advertising is the only way to go. Which sucks. But you have to keep in mind that this is a business and if any hockey player is ever going to get anything close to a Giancarlo Stanton type of contract, the league needs to bring in more money.
Does it suck? Yes. Is hockey a sport where it’s players and fans deeply care about and respect tradition? Yes. Does throwing ads on the jersey sort of ruin some of those traditions a bit? Yes. But will you still buy jerseys and buy tickets to games and watch them on TV regardless of if there are ads on the jerseys or not? Yes. And that’s the most important part. Ads or no ads, it’s still the game we watch and the NHL knows that. So as much as ads suck (like having to watch 30 seconds of an ad for a 15 second pizza review), it’s just something that’s inevitable so deal with it. The fans are going to bitch and complain about it for a while but that’s just because hockey fans love to be insufferable like that. Eventually you won’t even really notice the ads at all and hockey fans will be able to move on to a new subject to get incredibly too outraged about. Life will go on.
Unrelated but Related: Slava Voynov being deemed ineligible by the NHL to play for Team Russia this tournament is so satisfying. Fucking scumbag.