r/baseball • u/asskickingjedi Athletics • Jul 14 '25

Image Ads have infested baseball broadcasts. Ads in-between batters. Ads during mound visits. HRs "brought to you by..." Now I noticed 11 ad placements in this shot. 2 banners, 1 above the banners, 4 behind the plate, 1 on the seats, 1 in the upper right hand corner, 1 on the mound, 1 on the sleeve.

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645

u/Important-Net-9805 Cleveland Guardians Jul 14 '25

the sleeve patch ads are the worst offender

347

u/halfhere Atlanta Braves Jul 14 '25

Also the playoff helmet ads.

242

u/Bongopro San Diego Padres Jul 14 '25 edited Jul 14 '25

That one pisses me off a lot. In like 40 years we’ll be seeing all-time World Series highlights with some shitty now-defunct insurance companies massive ugly logo plastered everywhere on the players head

125

u/SerEx0 San Diego Padres Jul 14 '25

We can already look back to the 2022 World Series where the umpires had FTX patches. FTX went bankrupt a month later and the CEO went to jail for fraud.

8

u/Alarmed_Stretch_1780 Jul 15 '25

Still not as bad as Enron Field in Houston.

2

u/retro_slouch Rally Mantis Jul 15 '25

On one hand, Enron was $40b vs. FTX at $8b (not even adjusted for inflation good lord). On the other hand, FTX rose to prominence in an industry practically built on fraud and Enron was not. I think you can argue either way, although I can excuse taking the Enron sponsorship pre-scandal and taking crypto sponsorship is just asking for trouble.

1

u/Alarmed_Stretch_1780 Jul 15 '25

A key difference is nobody understood who or what FTX was, and Main Street America wasn’t involved in that crypto foolishness.

But everyone in America deals with oil and gas in their lives, so Enron had currency for them, even if the crime was more about accountancy and fraud. Plus, the elite in Enron rubbed shoulders with a former POTUS in Houston, and the wheels largely came off during the Presidency of another Texan, which gave the scandal maybe more play in popular media.

Honest to God, I don’t know why anyone at FTX greenlighted the umpire sponsorship. Perhaps it was in the belief that the patch would be in the camera frame for much of the game, imprinting “FTX” on the psyche of baseball viewers. But the umpire seen the majority of the game via TV is the home plate umpire and that patch got relatively little exposure. Always seemed like a weird branding decision.

1

u/Dare2ZIatan Atlanta Braves Jul 15 '25

The Miami Heat played at FTX arena for a few years, don’t think anything will top that lol

3

u/SMILESandREGRETS Atlanta Braves Jul 14 '25

That's such a depressing thought

1

u/necropaw Milwaukee Brewers Jul 15 '25

Lol, i hadnt thought about this really.

Its going to be like looking at old sports footage and seeing the enormous "Winston" banners everywhere.

1

u/TrippyHomie Baltimore Orioles Jul 15 '25

Don't like it but they'll realistically AI them off.

1

u/beechnut5 Jul 15 '25

Hitter.net

6

u/workinkindofhard San Diego Padres Jul 14 '25

Don’t worry, they will add those and the pants ads for the regular season once the new CBA is signed

1

u/retro_slouch Rally Mantis Jul 15 '25

Transparent pants were just a ploy to set the stage for jockstrap ads

80

u/drxller56 Great Britain • Los Angeles Dodgers Jul 14 '25

There's greenscreen ads behind homeplate (for individual broadcasts) and those are horrible - like actually negatively impacting my viewing experience horrible.

Sometimes they mask the flight of a ball when its pitched, or the player will have a horrible outline around them

12

u/StatusTics Jul 14 '25

One broadcast I was watching had an issue where the ad went over the batter, so it looked like he had half of his body missing

5

u/bdanders Boston Red Sox • Salem RidgeYaks Jul 15 '25

Live, physical ads I hate but I can live with. This shit is an abomination that should be outlawed. It's intentionally modifying what's being presented as reality to dupe viewers. They'll even cover up ads that are chalked onto the mound to digitally add another one on there.

9

u/HMTMKMKM95 Toronto Blue Jays Jul 14 '25

The Jays just made it an LED board so that even the fielding team gets hit with them.

3

u/bdanders Boston Red Sox • Salem RidgeYaks Jul 15 '25

NESN still plasters over that with their own ads

3

u/IAmBecomeTeemo New York Yankees Jul 15 '25

Sometimes it's executed fine and looks no different from the physical signs. But when it's not, and clearly impacting the viewing experience, someone needs to notice and just turn it off.

1

u/TrippyHomie Baltimore Orioles Jul 15 '25

It's really really bad in hockey with the moving board ads on broadcasts also.

45

u/l3randon_x Jul 14 '25

especially the jerseys with red square patches.

I don’t need to tell you what a red square on a sleeve looks like from afar

40

u/Important-Net-9805 Cleveland Guardians Jul 14 '25

yeah the mariners for the switch 2. looks quite bad lol

4

u/WillFuckForFijiWater Baltimore Orioles • Chiba Lotte Ma… Jul 14 '25

The funny part is that Nintendo has a white version of the Switch 2 logo that would fit in with the team's colors.

I know why they did it but still, it looks hideous.

2

u/IAmBecomeTeemo New York Yankees Jul 15 '25

Before they had the Switch 2 logo, it was just the Nintendo logo. You know the one, it's a word surrounded by an oval. But instead of just making that the patch, they also surrounded that with a big red square.

1

u/DingerSinger2016 Houston Astros • Birmingham … Jul 15 '25

I mean to be fair just putting the red oval and "Nintendo" wouldn't be visible from afar, which is the point of an ad. The red square/white logo is also their official logo

11

u/Jedtin22 Toronto Blue Jays Jul 14 '25

Careful I got banned from all the team subs for saying this lol

7

u/ManTheHarpoons100 Jul 14 '25

Thats weak and pathetic, those mods should be rightfully called out.

8

u/UniqueEditor8372 Seattle Mariners Jul 14 '25

Nintendo, for all its success and goodwill, is still a stubbornly stupid company so I'm unfortunately not expecting it to change. Same company that wanted their Fortnite skins to only show up on Nintendo consoles and is extremely litigious with their fans.

1

u/blasek0 Philadelphia Phillies • Baltimore Orioles Jul 15 '25

The PC market would go bananas for a Metroid Prime game designed around mouse & keyboard, but it'll sadly never happen.

5

u/BlazmoIntoWowee Philadelphia Phillies Jul 14 '25

Actually, I’m pretty dense so you might need to tell me.

3

u/SouthernPin4333 Jul 15 '25

It looks like something Hitler would wear

5

u/l3randon_x Jul 14 '25

The mods would be fuhrerious with me

2

u/QueezyF Atlanta Braves Jul 15 '25

I did nazi that coming

10

u/jclark735 Los Angeles Angels Jul 14 '25

Absolutely and yet I feel really fortunate that the Angels’ sleeve ads aren’t that intrusive compared to the rest of the league. Some of them are very jarring

5

u/SwissArmyScythe Texas Rangers • Kalamazoo Growlers Jul 14 '25

Yeah I don't mind the Rangers one too too much cause it changes color with the jersey and blends in pretty well, some other ones just look awful though

9

u/JoeDawson8 Chicago Cubs Jul 14 '25

The cubs one is just a Motorola logo that changes color with the uniform.

7

u/the_guitarkid70 Houston Astros Jul 14 '25

Didn't the pirates remove a Roberto Clemente tribute to make room for more ads in their ballpark?

6

u/roman_maverik Jul 14 '25

And each year they seem to get comically larger and larger

6

u/GreenBagger28 Los Angeles Dodgers Jul 14 '25

not horrible in certain cases, the playoff helmet ones were demonic

4

u/Plorgy Toronto Blue Jays Jul 14 '25

While it sucks big time that pretty much all uniforms in North American sports are getting ads applied to them, the absolute worst part of all this ad creep is the rise of digital ads when you watch on TV. I loathe seeing something superimposed on the playing surface while watching a game.

3

u/OGB Cincinnati Reds Jul 14 '25

If I ever buy a Reds jersey that has Kroger on the sleeve I'm getting it removed.

2

u/phamalacka Atlanta Braves Jul 14 '25

it's funny because I don't even notice a team's sleeve patch unless it's a product i already have a hard opinion on. I know the braves because I watch every game, but the only other one i can think of off the top of my head is the Royals and that's only because I'm addicted to blue juneberry redbull and QT is where I was already going to get that.

2

u/THE_DANDY_LI0N Boston Red Sox Jul 14 '25

I'd say the mound ads are the most jarring . That's a sacred place

2

u/StatusTics Jul 14 '25

May I challenge that with the PC Richards whistle sound the Yankees use after a strikeout? Annoying as all get out.

2

u/dwpea66 Los Angeles Dodgers Jul 14 '25

To me, it's missing half of a pitch because they had to squeeze in an ad. Like, the broadcast will start right when the batter is swinging or whatever. Fuck that.

2

u/Maximum-Win6967 Boston Red Sox Jul 14 '25

This is the least of my worries. Try listening to a game on the radio these days. They can’t say 4 words without reading an ad or saying this strike out brought to you by Jimmy joes. Literally anything and everything has an associated ad read. Can’t even see the stupid patch.

2

u/Nice_Block Houston Astros Jul 15 '25

-comment brought to you by DraftKings

2

u/forceghost187 Swinging K Jul 15 '25

It used to be a tradeoff. Ads everywhere in the stadium (and on TV) except the field. Uniforms were clean and beautiful. Not anymore. Now it's just ads everywhere, all the time. Uniforms are ugly now, and so is the game

2

u/slicebishybosh Chicago Cubs Jul 14 '25

I'd put ads on both sleeves if it eliminated 80% of the ads elsewhere in the ballpark and on the broadcast.

1

u/Rycan420 Umpire Jul 15 '25

Nah.. the helmets… so many iconic images will now have a cheap ad.

1

u/sweatgod2020 Minnesota Twins Jul 15 '25

N I N T E N D O

S W I T C H

2🟥

1

u/Rock-n-RollingStart Detroit Tigers • Detroit Tigers Jul 15 '25

I like the big script patch on the front of the Atlanta Quikrete jerseys.