Corporate America Hates Sports

Does it make me old-fashioned to say that I’m tired of the corporate circus that surrounds big sporting events today?

I’m old enough to remember the days when games like the Super Bowl and the NBA All-Star Game were all about the game itself. Back when I was a kid, you got the game and some commercials and that was it. Back then, there were no marketing executives trying to convince me that I really cared to see Jordin Sparks butcher her own song. Silly me, I thought I was tuning in to see an athletic competition.

I’m really tired of all of the extras that dare to turn these events into all-in-one entertainment extravaganzas. I can’t imagine that anyone is tuning in just to see someone blow through three or four songs during a halftime show, when they could get the DVD and watch an actual, fully realized performance. And people who are there to watch the game don’t care who’s performing in what, because they were going to watch the game anyway. You’re not expanding your audience, you’re just giving the actual sports fans a longer piss break.

Are they trying to create a family experience with all of this, something the whole family can watch together? I’d say no, because for one, the big sporting events always start around 9, which is when responsible parents are sending their kids to bed. But let’s say that they were letting them watch the entire game, despite the fact that these kids have school the next day.

The only one who’s really watching the game is Dad and maybe Son, if there is one, but these damn mini-concerts keep getting in the way. Mom doesn’t really care, and neither does Daughter, because they stopped showing musical acts that play on MTV because America is prejudiced against nipples. So the men aren’t happy, because Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are getting in the way of the football analysis, and the women aren’t happy, because, let’s face it…it’s Tom Petty. He’s not exactly a sex symbol. Not even in his own house.

I don’t know how it was with white people, but black households decided that they weren’t watching the Super Bowl halftime show the second it was announced. My girlfriend and I spent the entire halftime show making a list of other acts that we would have rather seen. Guns N’ Roses would have been 100 times more exciting, just because of the hope that Slash might go after Axl with his guitar.

I think back to the nameless college football halftime show from a few years ago when Ashlee Simpson performed and shockingly, everyone booed. I didn’t watch it, because I don’t watch college football (on the grounds that it isn’t a real sport) and I don’t watch Ashlee Simpson (on the grounds that she isn’t a real singer), but I remember wondering “How did they not see this coming?”

Ashlee Simpson’s fanbase is comprised of people who haven’t developed things like discernible taste (required to know that Ashlee Simpson isn’t talented) or attention span (required to watch a football game) and, by all accounts, was giving a horrible performance. College football fans are some of the most passionate, yet rude and belligerent fans outside of Philadelphia. And none of them like Ashlee Simpson. Now, any marketing student, even the ones sleeping the back of the classroom, can see that there is no crossover appeal here. At some point, someone should have pointed out that this was a bad idea and having her continue to sing just ran the risk of her getting hit with a foreign object. There weren’t any Ashlee Simpson fans anywhere watching that game and there weren’t any college football fans anywhere that even thought to themselves, “Man, I can’t wait to hear Ashlee Simpson sing.”

But these are the things that happen when you let marketing people have some control over your product. First, your stadium winds up with a ridiculous name (like Minute Maid Field) and second, your game winds up with a bad halftime show. Marketing execs really believe that ratings will go up if “interchangeable-pop-star-of-the-week” makes an appearance at a sporting event. This just isn’t the case, because the best you can hope for is an even swap of the audience. The sports fans are going to the bathroom and the tasteless kids who like this “music” are going to sit and watch. The only time this has ever worked out in the marketing department’s favor is when Prince performed, and only because he did songs from “Purple Rain.” If he had done songs from “The Rainbow Children,” I guarantee you there would have been a full-scale, South Park riot.

So why do they continue to do this, even though all they’re doing is filling the world with sadness? Sure, it’s for the money, but mostly because marketing execs don’t think in real world terms. They use corporate buzzwords when they think, so for future reference, if anyone you know ever uses the word “synergy” in a sentence, you know they’re about to do something stupid next, like try to convince you that the best thing to do at a biker rally is hold a live wrestling pay-per-view. Your only recourse is to whack them in head with something before they can complete their thoughts on how you’re stealing free TV every time you don’t watch the commercials.

Who benefits? They do, I guess. It certainly isn’t the viewer. There has never been a time in human history where a person has been forced to sit through a Destiny’s Child performance and felt like a winner at the end, except for that time that Michelle tripped over her own two feet and fell flat on her face. And yet, that’s what we got, over and over, at the 2003 All-Star Game. Because, according to the marketing department, that’s what we all really wanted. Not a showcase of the NBA’s biggest stars and the last All-Star Game that Michael Jordan would ever playing, but Beyonce warbling over some beat that even the most desperate rapper wouldn’t freestyle over. God Bless Corporate America.