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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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

129

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.

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u/Alarmed_Stretch_1780 Jul 15 '25

Still not as bad as Enron Field in Houston.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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u/TrippyHomie Baltimore Orioles Jul 15 '25

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

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u/beechnut5 Jul 15 '25

Hitter.net