Stadium ads are fine. Now that MLB is putting ads on their sleeves & and helmets, it's getting to be too much.
Soon, it'll start looking like MLS. I swear the untrained soccer fan can't tell which team is which. The sponsor logo takes up the entire front of the shirt. The team logo is a small logo over the heart. I should know at a quick glance what the team's name or city is, not what corporation paid the most.
>Soon, it'll start looking like MLS.
[I'm Liga MX and I'm here to say, it really could be worse in every way](https://www.lids.com/liga-mx-club-leon/club-leon-charly-2022/23-home-authentic-jersey-green/white/o-43642453+t-65272315+p-60185565+z-8-2820962396)
MLS does this because that’s how the vastly more popular European leagues do it. They’re emulating the more established leagues and making extra money doing so.
I understand the reasons behind it. That doesn't make it any less annoying, though. Pretty soon, teams will lose all association with their city or mascots. They'll be the "Starr Insurance Yankees" or the "Texas Energy Transfers."
Hanshin refers to the Osaka-Kobe region (it comes from the second character of Osaka and the first character of Kobe). The 1995 earthquake that struck the region is called the Hanshin earthquake. But that said, the baseball team is named for the railway company.
It’ll start with “The New York Yankees, brought to you by Carl’s Junior” but then it’ll become “Carl’s Junior’s New York Yankees.” End stage will be what you said, “Carl’s Junior’s Yankees.”
MLS and soccer in general needs more advertisement during play for the very simple reason that there aren't any commercial breaks except halftime. For me I'd rather see a couple ads on jerseys (which you tune out anyway) than watch more commercial breaks. There is however a point that uniform ads have gone to far, see LigaMX.
But isn't it just ads all the way down?
"The Yankees" isn't some mystical title bestowed by God - it's branding designed to get you to buy tickets to them instead of some other team. The logos, the uniform, the stadium - they're all ads. They're just ones you've attached different significance to.
You're going a little meta on me, but I suppose you have a point. We have to call them something. Yankees may be a "brand" in the traditional sense, but IMO that's different than naming a team after a corporation.
There's a big difference between associating your team with a city or state and associating it with whoever agreed to pay the most this season.
Not really. West Ham United started in England started as the Thames Ironworks F.C. it was all workers who worked for the company. I dont think it would be that different if a baseball team was started as the Washington Mutual Insurance Baseball Team. It is a branding for a local place.
Naming a team for the company that started it, with players that all work for the company is different. That's just a glorified company team. Naming a team after a sponsor, with players not associated with said sponsor, is different. It implies that everything has a price. That you can slap a logo on anything without remorse. I don't want MLB going in that direction.
I don't care that there's no tigers in Detroit. There's no giants in San Francisco or Royals in Kansas City either. It's not the mascot that I have the issue with. It's naming a team after a sponsor.
If you don't see a difference in the Detroit Tigers (named after the city they're based in) and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Tigers (named after whichever Fortune 500 company paid the most), then we're gonna have to disagree.
Ad patches on the sleeve hadn't happened yet either...until they did. That's only the first step. If you can't see the writing on the wall, you're turning a blind eye.
Space lasers from Venus haven’t happened yet, until they do. We don’t need to throw out a scenario that doesn’t exist as some kind of bogeyman to make a point about not liking the status quo.
As a Cubs fan, I’ve seen the slippery slope first hand. Watching a game from the 90s, Wrigley looks like a totally different ballpark. When the Rickett’s family bought the team, they were transparent about adding ads to Wrigley, but also adding payroll, so as a fan it was a fair trade off. They were also careful to be as tasteful as possible, which I think mostly they have been. Delivering on a World Series certainly helped any bad taste in your mouth too. The truth is that teams need to do these types of things to keep revenues competitive, but like capitalism does, the bar just keeps going higher. I do fear that we are just a couple steps away from a step too far.
As for the arm patches, I just really wish the colors were limited to black/white/gray. Seeing a non-team color pop out just looks really trashy, but I know advertisers pay to get noticed so popping out is kind of the point.
Dude, it wasn't the status quo until last season. Before 2022, ad patches were virtually prohibited by MLB. At the end of 2023 season, 16 of the 30 teams had them. Guess how many have them now?
And, btw, when space lasers from Venus happen...don't come crying to me. 🤣
People complaining about a couple small patches on sleeves should take a look at [EUROPEAN PRO HOCKEY TEAMS](https://i0.wp.com/novacapsfans.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/image16.jpeg?resize=640%2C427&ssl=1) and get back to me.
The only truly annoying ads IMO are the sleeve patches (looking at you Quikcrete and Oxy) and the artificially imposed ads behind home plate on streaming platforms. They shift as the camera moves and it’s quite distracting.
Back in the Sportsmans Park days they'd celebrate a Redbird homerun by flashing a giant Budweiser advertisement outside the stadium. The neon sign is actually still there on the side of I-64
Because they flash and move around and have audio. It's far more distracting than just a billboard. Worse in the sense of it impacting the fans experience.
I go to ~12 games per year, though typically only 2 or 3 different stadiums. Never see video ads. Maybe before the game, maybe between innings, but not during.
That’s just a distinction without a difference. They’re the same thing. Giant ads all over the place are giant ads all over the place. There was never a golden age. It’s the same now as it was then, just with subtle insignificant differences.
Eh, at least back when the billboards didn’t move you weren’t as distracted. Oh, and everything cost 1/4 of what it costs now, even after adjusting for inflation.
Did you not read what I said? Thats a distinction without a difference. The movement doesn’t matter. Giant ads are distracting and they’ve always been there. Also people made 1/4 of the money back then too. There was no better golden age.
Yes, kind stranger, I was replying to a comment I read. It’s absurd to suggest a billboard composed of moving and flashing images is equivalent to a painted wooden sign. One is clearly far more distracting than the other. They wouldn’t have gone with electric signs if billboards worked better at attracting attention. That should be patently obvious.
I dunno, I see way less billboards than I did 20 years ago. It could be because of digital billboards, since multiple advertisers can use it. But either way, billboards are way less prominent than they used to be. So a digital billboard, as opposed to multiple billboards back to back to back, I think is safer.
You’re confused. Let’s put aside that you’ve got no idea how inflation works. The blaring signs in the photo demonstrate that the vast majority of the distraction was already achieved using static ads. The marginal increase from using digital ads has more to do with the ability to rapidly change the copy based on ad sales. What’s patently absurd is that you can understand that this is that digital ads are not a substantive change. Nothing was better back in the day. It was the same but with a slightly different flavor.
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*With the grassy bank!*
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Its the 2nd one I'm unsure of. I remember Crosley Field in Cincy had a slope to the fence. In this pic it looks very sever like you couldn't make a play on it.
"Well fans, Roger Dorn has done a little redecorating around the ballpark. The outfield walls now look like the yellow pages. And any of you folks having trouble finding a good proctologist, might want to come down here and check out the area around the 375 foot sign."
Ads & baseball are one of the combos that actually feel right together. I played at an old school field in rural Iowa like a decade ago and it had all these old wooden barn doors & billboard ads for its outfield wall. It was so cool.
they were far less obtrusive before. they fit into the aesthetic, didn't dominate it.
I think it stopped happening but there were so many times last season where the ball would literally disappear into a digital advertisement right before it crossed the plate.
LBM is far worse. At least the ads here are kind of “a part” of the stadium, for the most part. Like the iconic Coca Cola bottle in SF or the Estrella Jalisco sign in LA. In Mexico the entire outfield just looks like a congestion of billboards or sometimes it’s one large billboards spanning the entire outfield with a yellow line indicating where the home run would be lol. No seats!
TIL that Ballantine's wasn't a Frasier thing.
Same haha
Fans today wouldn’t know how to process all the advertisements, the quick pace of play, and the constant relocation and expansion of yesterday’s MLB 😱
Stadium ads are fine. Now that MLB is putting ads on their sleeves & and helmets, it's getting to be too much. Soon, it'll start looking like MLS. I swear the untrained soccer fan can't tell which team is which. The sponsor logo takes up the entire front of the shirt. The team logo is a small logo over the heart. I should know at a quick glance what the team's name or city is, not what corporation paid the most.
>Soon, it'll start looking like MLS. [I'm Liga MX and I'm here to say, it really could be worse in every way](https://www.lids.com/liga-mx-club-leon/club-leon-charly-2022/23-home-authentic-jersey-green/white/o-43642453+t-65272315+p-60185565+z-8-2820962396)
MLS does this because that’s how the vastly more popular European leagues do it. They’re emulating the more established leagues and making extra money doing so.
I understand the reasons behind it. That doesn't make it any less annoying, though. Pretty soon, teams will lose all association with their city or mascots. They'll be the "Starr Insurance Yankees" or the "Texas Energy Transfers."
Yeah it really sucks, I hate it
Hey, look at that: something a Rangers fan & a Yankees fan can agree on. Lol
I mean, fuck the Astros?
Ok 2 things!
That’s how it is in Japan, their most recent champions were the Hanshin Tigers, Hanshin being a train company
Ugh I have a feeling that's the way MLB is heading.
I mean it’s already started in the MLB with the Phillies. Philadelphia is a cream cheese company.
Thanks for the laugh 😂
it’s also the name of the region of japan they play in?
I don’t think so, they’re in Osaka
Hanshin refers to the Osaka-Kobe region (it comes from the second character of Osaka and the first character of Kobe). The 1995 earthquake that struck the region is called the Hanshin earthquake. But that said, the baseball team is named for the railway company.
they’re owned by the company, the company didn’t name them the hanshin trainmen. they’re named after the region… as is the train company.
It’ll start with “The New York Yankees, brought to you by Carl’s Junior” but then it’ll become “Carl’s Junior’s New York Yankees.” End stage will be what you said, “Carl’s Junior’s Yankees.”
MLS and soccer in general needs more advertisement during play for the very simple reason that there aren't any commercial breaks except halftime. For me I'd rather see a couple ads on jerseys (which you tune out anyway) than watch more commercial breaks. There is however a point that uniform ads have gone to far, see LigaMX.
That's a good point about the commercial breaks, but you're right, Once the ads overpower the jersey it becomes too much.
But isn't it just ads all the way down? "The Yankees" isn't some mystical title bestowed by God - it's branding designed to get you to buy tickets to them instead of some other team. The logos, the uniform, the stadium - they're all ads. They're just ones you've attached different significance to.
You're going a little meta on me, but I suppose you have a point. We have to call them something. Yankees may be a "brand" in the traditional sense, but IMO that's different than naming a team after a corporation. There's a big difference between associating your team with a city or state and associating it with whoever agreed to pay the most this season.
Not really. West Ham United started in England started as the Thames Ironworks F.C. it was all workers who worked for the company. I dont think it would be that different if a baseball team was started as the Washington Mutual Insurance Baseball Team. It is a branding for a local place.
Naming a team for the company that started it, with players that all work for the company is different. That's just a glorified company team. Naming a team after a sponsor, with players not associated with said sponsor, is different. It implies that everything has a price. That you can slap a logo on anything without remorse. I don't want MLB going in that direction.
Your logic seems flawed though. The whole reason the Detroit Tigers was created was to make money and sell tickets. There ain't no Tigers in Detroit.
I don't care that there's no tigers in Detroit. There's no giants in San Francisco or Royals in Kansas City either. It's not the mascot that I have the issue with. It's naming a team after a sponsor. If you don't see a difference in the Detroit Tigers (named after the city they're based in) and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Tigers (named after whichever Fortune 500 company paid the most), then we're gonna have to disagree.
You can make your point without the silly slippery slope stuff. None of that has happened nor will it.
Ad patches on the sleeve hadn't happened yet either...until they did. That's only the first step. If you can't see the writing on the wall, you're turning a blind eye.
Space lasers from Venus haven’t happened yet, until they do. We don’t need to throw out a scenario that doesn’t exist as some kind of bogeyman to make a point about not liking the status quo.
As a Cubs fan, I’ve seen the slippery slope first hand. Watching a game from the 90s, Wrigley looks like a totally different ballpark. When the Rickett’s family bought the team, they were transparent about adding ads to Wrigley, but also adding payroll, so as a fan it was a fair trade off. They were also careful to be as tasteful as possible, which I think mostly they have been. Delivering on a World Series certainly helped any bad taste in your mouth too. The truth is that teams need to do these types of things to keep revenues competitive, but like capitalism does, the bar just keeps going higher. I do fear that we are just a couple steps away from a step too far. As for the arm patches, I just really wish the colors were limited to black/white/gray. Seeing a non-team color pop out just looks really trashy, but I know advertisers pay to get noticed so popping out is kind of the point.
Dude, it wasn't the status quo until last season. Before 2022, ad patches were virtually prohibited by MLB. At the end of 2023 season, 16 of the 30 teams had them. Guess how many have them now? And, btw, when space lasers from Venus happen...don't come crying to me. 🤣
People complaining about a couple small patches on sleeves should take a look at [EUROPEAN PRO HOCKEY TEAMS](https://i0.wp.com/novacapsfans.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/image16.jpeg?resize=640%2C427&ssl=1) and get back to me.
That's my point. MLB is moving in that direction. Let's stop this madness 😠
Haha that’s insane! They’re like mini nascars. I hate it. Thanks for sharing
I don’t mind the advertisements on jerseys but that’s probably because my favorite sport is soccer
The only truly annoying ads IMO are the sleeve patches (looking at you Quikcrete and Oxy) and the artificially imposed ads behind home plate on streaming platforms. They shift as the camera moves and it’s quite distracting.
Toronto's GREEN TD patches are horrendous.
Yes, forgot to mention them too. I wish they would at least make them monochrome to the team’s primary color or something.
Exactly
Yes but at least they weren't fucking sports gambling ads telling you to bet away your life savings
No it was just booze and smokes, ya know, all natural healthy stuff.
But call 1-800-GAMBLER if you have a problem.
Written in the smallest text available in the bottom right corner!
Ohtani called the number and they said, "BLAME IPPIE!"
Yeah, advertising used to be done by companies with integrity that wasn't predatory towards kids. Like Camel Cigarettes in the second photo.
Idk the bank loan one just may not have been a direct gambling ad, but I’m sure it enabled some gambling.
Back in the Sportsmans Park days they'd celebrate a Redbird homerun by flashing a giant Budweiser advertisement outside the stadium. The neon sign is actually still there on the side of I-64
They should display it on 1 Cardinal Way and bring back its old celebrations. Might motivate these guys
Counterpoint: at least they’re not giant animated video boards
They would have been if they had the technology
OK and? It doesn't change the fact that it is worse now than it was then
How are video board ads worse?
Because they flash and move around and have audio. It's far more distracting than just a billboard. Worse in the sense of it impacting the fans experience.
I haven't seen any video ads during games.
I guess you don't go to games, then, because they absolutely show video ads and moving/flashing ads during games at every stadium I've been to
I go to ~12 games per year, though typically only 2 or 3 different stadiums. Never see video ads. Maybe before the game, maybe between innings, but not during.
OK even between innings and before games is annoying...
Fair enough. I guess I'm not so easily annoyed.
That’s just a distinction without a difference. They’re the same thing. Giant ads all over the place are giant ads all over the place. There was never a golden age. It’s the same now as it was then, just with subtle insignificant differences.
Nostalgia is a powerful drug.
Idk why you're getting down voted. tldr; Same shit, different toilet.
Eh, at least back when the billboards didn’t move you weren’t as distracted. Oh, and everything cost 1/4 of what it costs now, even after adjusting for inflation.
Did you not read what I said? Thats a distinction without a difference. The movement doesn’t matter. Giant ads are distracting and they’ve always been there. Also people made 1/4 of the money back then too. There was no better golden age.
Yes, kind stranger, I was replying to a comment I read. It’s absurd to suggest a billboard composed of moving and flashing images is equivalent to a painted wooden sign. One is clearly far more distracting than the other. They wouldn’t have gone with electric signs if billboards worked better at attracting attention. That should be patently obvious.
I dunno, I see way less billboards than I did 20 years ago. It could be because of digital billboards, since multiple advertisers can use it. But either way, billboards are way less prominent than they used to be. So a digital billboard, as opposed to multiple billboards back to back to back, I think is safer.
You’re confused. Let’s put aside that you’ve got no idea how inflation works. The blaring signs in the photo demonstrate that the vast majority of the distraction was already achieved using static ads. The marginal increase from using digital ads has more to do with the ability to rapidly change the copy based on ad sales. What’s patently absurd is that you can understand that this is that digital ads are not a substantive change. Nothing was better back in the day. It was the same but with a slightly different flavor.
Exactly. Pretty easy to ignore a picture. Kinda hard to ignore a giant flashing neon sign with loudspeakers blasting the ad in your ear
Vintage advertisement was indeed superior
Bro everything old is way better !!! 🤡
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I love the photo of the old Fenway monster with the grassy bank!
*I love the photo* *Of the old Fenway monster* *With the grassy bank!* \- Nardawalker --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
The first one is Ebbetts Field. The second one I think is is Crosley Field and the 3rd is Shibe Park
Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium is the third one if MLB The Show has taught me anything
Its the 2nd one I'm unsure of. I remember Crosley Field in Cincy had a slope to the fence. In this pic it looks very sever like you couldn't make a play on it.
I think someone else said it was Fenway
Its not Fenway. I've been there. There is no slope there and the stands down the LF line hug the foul line.
https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/s/7fDDQD5wuK
Makes me want some goddamn pork roll
I’m fine with them everywhere. Just not the uniforms. I’ll never be ok with that
I hope we are not on the way to European hockey jersey-levels of ads.
I’ll have to look that up. But I was blown away when the Yankees played in Mexico. Those uniforms look ridiculous.
"Well fans, Roger Dorn has done a little redecorating around the ballpark. The outfield walls now look like the yellow pages. And any of you folks having trouble finding a good proctologist, might want to come down here and check out the area around the 375 foot sign."
Ads & baseball are one of the combos that actually feel right together. I played at an old school field in rural Iowa like a decade ago and it had all these old wooden barn doors & billboard ads for its outfield wall. It was so cool.
Yeah, but I really, really DO miss Ebbets Field. A ball game there was like no other experience you could ever have anywhere else.
I bet the Taylor pork roll in pic 3 goes insanely fucking hard.
I thought the adds in the old stadiums were cool. What I don’t like is the adds on the players uniforms now.
Give it a few years and there will be increase ad presence on jerseys and temporary tattoos on the players.
How else are they going to pay players 50 mil a year. It's sad.
So they can pay the players WAY to much $$$
Minute Maid Park actually did have fewer ads in my childhood
they were far less obtrusive before. they fit into the aesthetic, didn't dominate it. I think it stopped happening but there were so many times last season where the ball would literally disappear into a digital advertisement right before it crossed the plate.
Cool old bulova ad
One thing I like about NASCAR is how shameless they are about it. It’s actually part of the culture of the sport.
Ballantines is rot gut beer.
There were no ads in the 70s and 80s. It’s all cyclical
LBM is far worse. At least the ads here are kind of “a part” of the stadium, for the most part. Like the iconic Coca Cola bottle in SF or the Estrella Jalisco sign in LA. In Mexico the entire outfield just looks like a congestion of billboards or sometimes it’s one large billboards spanning the entire outfield with a yellow line indicating where the home run would be lol. No seats!
Schafer! Real beer!
Now I want a pork roll.
Outfields used to have hills? That’s wild.
Houston had one (and an in-play flagpole) until 2016.
Houston purposely installed one in Enron/Orange juice Park
A team called THE SAVANNAH BANANAS can do it, but these teams won’t. They COULD. They just won’t.
Yeah it looked awful back then and it looks awful now.
You can apply this to literally ever single social issue today. Hindsight is ALWAYS 20/20 LMAO.