If you put a baseball fan from the 1970s in a time machine and had them watch a modern-day broadcast, they’d find it nearly unrecognizable. Sadly, it wouldn’t be the athleticism of players or HD that would baffle them most; it would be the complete takeover of advertisements.
A fan on the r/baseball subreddit brought the subject to the forefront with a striking screenshot from a San Diego Padres broadcast teeming with ads on nearly every part of the screen.
Photo Credit: Reddit
In their post, they called out an outrageous 11 ad placements including banners, brands stitched on jerseys, ads superimposed by the broadcaster, ads on the pitching mounds and branding on vacant seatbacks.
The OP also alluded to verbal ad reads and placements following home runs, mound visits, and regular at-bats. Like-minded baseball fans have previously registered their frustration with distracting LED banners, and ever-prominent branding on players’ equipment like batting helmets.
One Redditor went through the trouble of removing all the ads, and it is a striking difference that would look much more familiar to our theoretical fan from the 1970s.
This inundation of advertising is far from limited to baseball and the U.S. Fans reacted angrily to an egregious example of superimposed ads on an Indian cricket broadcast.Â
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Ultimately, these ads have worse impacts than just ruining the viewing experience of sports. They push overconsumption, which is a dangerous trend for the planet.Â
Never-ending production of goods leads to more planet-heating carbon pollution that worsens the state of the overheating planet. It also naturally leads to consumers throwing out perfectly good items into overfilled landfills that play their own role in warming the planet.
Unfortunately, with how much money is being generated through sports advertising, Redditors are resigned to the current reality.
“700, 750, 330, and 350 mil contracts don’t just pay for themselves,” a user shared. “This was inevitable and it sucks.”
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“It should legit be called Moneyball now,” a poster quipped.
“Ads have invaded every part of American life,” a user wrote. “You can’t go anywhere without someone trying to get you to buy something.”
The Redditor is certainly onto something, as a day at the beach, a dinner of Chinese food, and even your kids’ trip to school are now deemed just another place for advertisers to make their presence felt in unwelcome ways.
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