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Sponsor my arse — 14 Comments

  1. Someone called to our house the other day and asked if we’d sponsor them to go to Canada. Didn’t say it was some special event they were going to or on behalf or some charity… just thrust a list and pen in my mother’s face, and said in a thick Dublin drawl “will ya sponsor me ta go tuh Canaduh?”
    “No”, she said, and closed the door.
    This probably isn’t related to your “name the venue” rant… and while, for the most part, I agree with you.. I haven’t really got as major a problem with it. It’s just another – although possibly a more insidious and pervasive – form of advertising.
    Unfortunately, it isn’t an unusual thing these days, by any means… Would you have the same problem with, say, ‘The Reebok Stadium’ or ‘The Manchester Evening News Arena’ in England?
    Or is it the erosion of the identity of former national icons (the Point and Landsdowne specifically) that you’re concerned with? To be honest, I reckon the name doesn’t really matter for most people.. although I was glad to see sense prevail when it came to naming the Luas stop at “The O2” (they called it ‘The Point’).
    Um… yes.

  2. I have to agree with you on this but have got a small device that works great for tv. It’s the sky + box. I just record everything now and then watch it later and fast forward through the ads, it’s great espically when they put 52 sets of ads on in a hour long program. It’s amazing how many episodes you can get through in a couple of hours!
    I used t read FHM magazine but gave up when it trippled in size as it had become full of adverts, what a waste of money. Most of them are like this now.
    What gives with all the companies changing their names all the time? Why couldn’t they just stick with the old name Hibernian or like opal fruits instead of the new name starbusrt. Who comes up with this crap?

  3. Welcome, NiallOK!  Personally, I would have sponsored them.  Provided of course that it was a one way ticket?

    Really what saddens me is the gullibility of people.  Just because a company pays silly money to have their name associated with something, doesn’t mean we all have to use that name.  Every time people talk about the O2 or the Aviva they are acting as private advertising agents for the sponsoring company.  It’s the same principle as those thick-as-pigshit women who pay fortunes for handbags with Prada written on them.  Don’t they realise that they are paying ludicrous money to a company for the privilege of advertising their name?  I just refuse to advertise anyone unless they pay me for the privilege.

  4. Welcome, Andrew!  Two newcomers in succession!!  Yup.  I have one of those boxes myself and am a master at winding forward at 20x, and hitting play just as the programme starts again.  I wonder if they issue degrees in that art?  Of course the other great technological marvel is the mute button.

    It’s bad enough when they change names but what baffles me is when they just have a ‘rebranding’.  As an example, there was the time Aer Lingus paid out a vast fortune just to redesign the shamrock on their logo.  RTE is the same.  They are always playing around with theirs for no reason whatsoever.

  5. Okay, I’m with you on this one. Well, I’m with you on most things but just don’t readily admit it.
    But this I have to.
    The trend started here in the states a couple of decades ago. I lived in San Diego in the eighties not far from a nice sports stadium called Jack Murphy Stadium, in honor of a famed sports writer. Long story short, the name was changed to Qualcomm Stadium when the “Internet age” hit.
    Then, as if that weren’t bad enough, they decided that the baseball team needed a new stadium because they shared that one with the football team, so they built one for something like a hundred and forty million dollars and called it.. PETCO PARK. Turns out PETCO, the pet supply retailer, signed a deal to pay sixty million over the course of 22 years for the name rights.
    http://www.ballparksofbaseball.com/nl/PetcoPark.htm
    WHAT do pet supplies have to do with baseball?
    So I’m living in San Francisco now, and it turns out the same thing happened here. Just before living in San Diego back in the eighties, I spend a couple of years stationed here on board a US Naval vessel at Hunters Point, which is near the famed San Francisco sports stadium, Candlestick Park. Isn’t that a lovely name? I can only assume it’s because it resembles a giant birthday cake when lit up on game nights, which I remember seeing all those years ago.
    So, San Francisco’s baseball team, the Giants, used to share Candlestick Park with the football team, the 49’ers, but it was decided not too long ago that they needed their own baseball park so the city built one for them, and it’s quite nice.
    The name of it? AT&T Park.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At%26t_park
    At least wireless phone and Internet service has more to do with baseball than dogfood, I think.
    Or does it?

  6. Rhodester – I rest my case.  Candlestick Park has a poetic quality about it.  It sounds like the name of a book or a song.  Those other names are about as poetic as a shipload of scrap iron being dumped from a height.  Of course another sideline to this business is that these companies get their names embedded on ordnance maps and street names.  Fuck!!  Capitalism and big business gone haywire!

  7. Exactly.

    And here’s another thing.. these companies sometimes go out of business or merge, then the name has to change. Jack Murphy is deceased, and the name of the stadium was meant to keep his memory alive. Candlestick IS a poetic name, and always will be.

    Yet the new stadium in San Francisco was originally called PacBell Park, then SBC Park and finally AT&T Park when all the buyouts were done. It went through so many name changes in its first six years that the locals just refer to it as “The Phonebooth.”
    In Orange County California, just south of LA, is the John Wayne Airport. Named for him because he lived in Newport Beach (Orange County) and did a lot for the development of the area.. it was meant to keep his legacy alive.

    It was said (I was told this by a long-time taxi driver) that when waiting for an outgoing flight, Wayne wouldn’t spend his time in the VIP lounge but would instead go up to the taxi que and have a smoke while shooting the bull with the cab drivers, long before the airport was named for him, which was posthumous.
    NOW they’re thinking of changing it to something stupid, which I’ve forgotten because it’s so awful, and the reason given is that John Wayne has been gone so long now that this upcoming generation isn’t familiar with him.

  8. Sorry for being so chatty this morning.. you hit on one of my pet peeves. Which has nothing to do with Petco. HAHA.
     

  9. You have discovered my pet hate.  Advertising.  Although I believe I have mentioned it before? Anyways NASCAR have it best. Advertising billboards flashing before your eyes at 200 mph. Brilliant concept.

  10. Rhodester – Nothing wrong with being chatty.  I remember John Wayne Airport from my old Flight Simulator days!!  Wasn’t there an actor or someone named after it?

    TT – We agree on more than we disagree!!  I have just had a phonecall from Guinness – €40,000,000 if I rename this site to Guinness Head Rambles.  I turned them down of course.

  11. Then we have the Magners’ League and the Heineken Cup.
    At least Munster Rugby resisted the trend and continued to call their new stadium “Thomond Park”.

  12. It was good of them to shape it like a huge U.  I presume Sean Dunne will construct the huge F to go with it once he’s sold all his jaxroll out of Jury’s?

  13. They are trying to get the Dart station re-named to Aviva Stadium instead of Landsdowne Road. These people don’t care about offending the public and they don’t care about local history. They are usually not very intelligent but very good at being marketing whores in the pay of faceless organisations. They get big bonuses for ‘achieving targets’. They are the least required profession on earth.

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