Sports & Sponsorships

By: Vince DiGirolamo, Associate Planner, Consumer Insights

This year, the NBA is incorporating a new element to it's All-Star Weekend extravaganza - the game of Horse. The goal of this game is to make a shot that your opponent can't. If they fail to successfully make a shot that you make, they get an "H" and once you have H-O-R-S-E, you are eliminated. It's a simple game, and pretty much anyone who has ever shot a basketball has played or at least heard of this game. Following the announcement of including Horse, it was also announced that instead of spelling out "HORSE" the participants will be spelling out "GEICO." Yup, that's right. It's one thing if Geico simply sponsored the game, but changing the name to spell out their brand name is another story.

We've all become accustomed to the stadium being named [insert company name here] park or stadium. We've even accepted that NCAA football bowl games are now known as the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, the PapaJohns.com Bowl, and the Gaylord Music City Hotels Bowl.

Things like this I'm ok with. I was even cool with when MLB's Chicago White Sox changed the start time of all of their home games to 7:11pm based on a sponsorship deal with convenience store chain, 7-Eleven. But this whole Horse-Geico thing, I have a problem with - and based on what I've been hearing, I'm not alone. It's one thing to slap a name on a stadium or sponsor a game. However, it's a whole different story once you get into changing how the actual games are played or the terminology that has been around since the games we know and love have been invented. With sports, tradition is something that is widely valued and once you start tampering with that, everything goes out the window.

I would think there has to be a line in the sand somewhere...right? For all we know, a home run will soon be known as a "Guitar Hero Homer" and a touchdown will be known as a "ShamWow."

Oh man, I hope not.