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Comment by vel0city | Hacker News Reader

The digital boards in hockey can get really annoying even when they're working as intended. Animating them should definitely be banned and I wouldn't mind seeing the digital ads disappear entirely.

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I was shocked as a non-hockey fan to see an ad of a car driving along the wall during active play. My eyes instinctively moved to the ad away from the puck. It was gross.

As an NBA fan, I hate how ads keep getting crammed into every piece of equipment on the court, the jerseys, etc.

> My eyes instinctively moved to the ad away from the puck.

At some marketing meeting this was brought up and was promptly considers a feature, not a bug.

As not a fan of professional sports, every time I see a sports game on TV, I feel like the game itself is secondary. It absolutely feels like an advertising show with the unimportant addition of people playing something.

Which sports, specifically? I watch football and rugby and while both have a lot of advertising (in stadia and on jerseys) TV coverage is still very clearly focussed on the sport itself

>and on jerseys

Precisely. I used to be an avid Arsenal fan, but now it seems that I would support "Emirates Fly Better". The fact that it's on every player's shirt one might say that "TV coverage is still very clearly focussed on the shirt itself". I do enjoy admitting, their website https://www.arsenal.com/ is rather tastefully done (I turned off all extensions to have a good look), though. And 'Visit Rwanda' doesn't seem to such be a bad thing, though I couldn't find an Emirates flight to there.

Shirt sponsors aren't not a particularly new thing, though. But I guess in the past Arsenal in particular had sponsors with slightly less controversial owners - iirc JVC and SEGA/Dreamcast weren't directly involved in any slave labour controversies or human rights abuses like the UAE is :)

And gay rights, which both the UAE and Rwanda (where gay sex is legal now, but just another case where the gov has changed the law to appeal to Western sensibilities but sentiments of the public have no changed) are terrible at.

Every show on commercial television is a carrier for advertisement - doubly so the evening news.

Over here in Europe that's now business as usual during soccer matches, and also biathlon, where a car follows the athletes on the billboard while they are skiing up a slope. However those are actual physical LED displays, not virtually inserted.

If anyone has clips of such horrible placements, please do share.

Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk3Jx1juRR8&t=1s

Edit: https://twitter.com/NYIslanders/status/1589812414966468608 is a good example of ad creative being way too distracting

Thanks, this indeed looks like a horrible idea in general.

The janky overlays in that YouTube video are hilarious... Happening even when nobody's wearing cream colored clothing!

It's even worse when the hockey players' white uniforms confuse the video effect algorithm into thinking the uniforms are part of the board and the algorithm paints the uniform with part of the ad.

see https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/nhl-fans-are-already-fed-up...

Similarly I seem to remember Boise State football games resulting in glitchy first-down marker lines on TV - the blue field and blue uniforms make blue screening a challenge I’m sure.

Similarly, seeing splashes of color on Eastern Michigan's gray field breaks my brain a little. It's like watching an old black and white film with only certain characters colorized.

They talk about that in the posted article

What's crazy to me is that the NBA is banning a specific shade of cream from one team, on the basis that it may interfere with court keying in some locations, when several possible solutions are proposed in the article.

But then the NHL is just like "hey, away jerseys are white and the ice is white and the boards are white and we really dgaf".

> and we really dgaf

Or we really only gaf about the money.

> "Like anything else, you're going to have your people that don't like it, that think it is difficult to watch. But over time, like everything else, people will get used to it, and we're not concerned at all whatsoever," Keith Wachtel, the NHL's chief business officer and executive vice president of global partnerships, told ESPN ahead of the season.

Wow. That statement is dripping with contempt for their viewers. It sucks that these huge sports leagues have little in the way of competition.

Sports is a bit of a natural monopoly. No matter how many leagues you have, the best of each are still gonna wanna play eachother.

Can't wait for the day someone invents a video ad blocker. Let's see if this guy will "get used" to that.

no one is going to flash the firmware on their TV to block ads.

I will.

> dripping with contempt for their viewers

Marketing and advertising in general. Their spend billions to force their way into every aspect of people's lives, steal their attention, spy on their lives, sell their data, force malware onto their platforms, all so they can force people to think in a way they wouldn't ordinarily? It's truly dark, inhumane, mind control. Screw them. If I want your widget I'll come find it.

>It sucks that these huge sports leagues have little in the way of competition.

Of course they do: people could spend their time doing (or watching) something else. Watch a TV show or movie, read a book, listen to some music, practice playing an instrument, cook some food, write a software program, go on a walk; there's endless things to do with your time besides watching sports. If you don't like the ads and the contempt for viewers from the people running the sports leagues, then stop giving them your time and attention.

I assume you’re similarly unbothered by googles domination of search because rather than searching for information you could be baking a cake?

I don't know about you, but I don't use Google search much, I use DDG.

So, no, I'm not bothered by Google's domination when I actually don't use it much. Doesn't seem to be "domination" to me.

I use duck duck go dot com to search the internet also, but I still get plenty of search results informed by people interested in gaming the algorithm used to display results on google dot com.

Can't right say that I'm unaffected.

Google clearly has a very dominant market position, but the recent events with Facebook / Meta have made me reevaluate my stance on supposed tech monopolies. A few years ago, Meta and Google looked like they had an unassailable duopoly on digital advertising, and there were many calls to break up both companies. I completely supported this movement. However, looking at the situation now, Facebook's position is not nearly as strong. TikTok has made a huge impact on the consumption side, and Apple and Amazon have emerged as strong players in the digital ads business. Essentially, the market seems to be working as intended. As for Google specifically, the company recognizes that their main product is nothing more than the "homework website" for the new generation. People are getting more and more of their information from places like TikTok or Reddit. Even if you use Google, it's becoming increasingly a conduit to a handful of destinations. Google's position in the market place doesn't seem as dominant as it once was.

I don’t think it’s contempt.

If viewership stays the same then “they got used to it”

I've been a hockey fan my entire life and now I can't watch any NHL games anymore. I made two attempts at watching my team's first game of the season. I didn't make it past the halfway point. I just can't focus, and the ads were giving me headaches to boot.

I went through a stage of mourning for the first couple weeks of the season. Now I'm just at a loss of what to do with my time...

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