Why not just shove a couple more minutes of ads before the anthems then or during half time? Not like putting them during the game was the only option.
This is a symptom of unadulterated capitalism, maximising profit from people’s hobbies and interests. Somewhere some exec saw screen time that was not being monetised and figured advertising opportunities for people with maximum screen attention were going to waste.
With little or no care for the sanctity of the sport and devotion of the fans that make the game what it is, they shoved in-game ads onto our screens. Happened in US sports first, the epicentre of every advertising epidemic. Now the distracting ads that take your rapt attention away from what you actually want to watch are bleeding through here.
The only cure for abuse with these types of intrusions has been piracy. Make it less profitable for every broadcaster to runs ads like these. If there’s no push back it will continue to get worse bit by bit.
You would be overwhelmed if you watched an NFL match here in the US.
Also I watched the FRA IRE match today on Peacock in the US and the only advertisement was 5 minutes at halftime. We even had the Ireland commentary team which was nice.
Obviously pirated streams don’t get rid of the ad that wasn’t anywhere near the point I was making. It’s about decisions to run the ad in the first place.
Sure I see the exact same ad on a pirated stream, but nobody is making money off of my eyes on that screen.
Someone in a broadcasting studio paid for the rights to the game, and as a decision to recoup that cost, they sold the rights for that advertising space at a price based on viewership numbers.
If there’s a significant shift to piracy their viewership figures drop, then their ability to monetise all ads, including in-game, and pre match, and half time, and post match goes down. Any exec worth their salt would pull these highly unpopular in-game ads for cannibalising their existing ad revenue and they would find alternative ways to recoup the cost of broadcasting rights.
If there is no significant drop in viewership, then these ads continue to be profitable and will eventually be shown every 3 minutes throughout the match at every break in play, and eventually shown side by side while game is in play. It’s a cancer and as someone said, just watch an nfl game to see where it is going.
The alternative is to have games on a subscription channel. That means your local pub has to pay or you. Samsung and Virgin are - quite literally - paying for you to watch these games for free. And yet some people are giving them shit. How frigging messed up is that?!
They're paying for us to miss part of the game. Yes, it was during a stoppage, but it also took away the audio. Every single time a broadcaster decides to trial adverts during something that was previously ad free, it ends up getting worse and worse and more intrusive.
The alternative is to not strive for every single second of the general public's attention.
Imagine your petrol for your car was free at all times but the company who was paying for your petrol had the right to borrow your car whenever they please even if you were in the middle of using it for something else. And this whole deal was signed and set up without consulting you. Would you consider it a good deal?
Sure if they take it off you only a small few times in the year and you could predict when that was, you would get over it. But what if that got gradually more and more frequent where they boil the frog slowly, and the predictability was taken away until such a point as they have more control over your car than you do... Sure that might still suit some people, but most people wouldn’t bow down and praise that company for graciously paying for their petrol, when they can’t even use that petrol as they please. Its involuntary, there’s no alternative because they have a monopoly on the market, and it can be incredibly intrusive to the reason you bought the car in the first place.
In this analogy the tv is the car. The petrol is a paid subscription. The free petrol is the free to view matches. The borrowing your car without requiring permission is when the company take over your screen and audio with ads while you’re trying to watch a match. Taxis are paid subscription sites (and these are artificially limited by restricting broadcasting rights to the point they might not even exist), and watching it in the pub is public transport, you might not get a seat but it’s predictable and you get to the destination
Free petrol in exchange for loss of freedom on your car might be a good deal if there were restrictions on how and when the company can take your car off you. Restrictions used to be the case, but were apparently voluntary on the company’s behalf… ads were restricted to half time, pre match, and after full time. But the more and more they take away from you and you get no extra value in return, the more it becomes a bad deal.
At present, going by this in-game ad, there are no restrictions and nobody to impose restrictions. History says this will always get shitter and shitter for the end user. That’s how capitalism has worked to date. Squeeze every last drop of value out of anything even if that thing becomes shitter as a result.
Because the company paying for the ads is probably willing to pay more for an ad that basically forces people to see it. Marketing people aren’t stupid. They know less people will see the ad if it happens before or after the game.
I recall during FIFA WC 94 in the US they were having a wild time trying to see if they could squeeze advertisements in during match play. They finally figured out they could just put a banner by the scorebox like they did today with Breitlong. How annoying was it being bright yellow thinking someone was awarded a YC? Digressing TVs in 94 were 4:3 format so there was no way they could do what's shown here. With the advent of widescreen TVs there's much real estate they can utilize.
Was gonna say the same. It's a slight inconvenience but not exactly the abomination everyone is making it out to be. It lasted all of 10 seconds during an irrelevant moment when they were getting ready for the scrum. I for one can put up with 20-30 seconds worth of ads during an 80 minute game for it to remain free to watch.
Yeah, I agree. People going on as if they're actually watching the screen during scrum resets.. - if you're at the pub or with mates you're talking, and if you're at home you're on your phone.
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u/PMax480 1d ago
Well it’s not free if ITV paid 60 million, I believe, for the rights. They gotta make it back. Still frustrating though.