I don’t care how much cash they add to the league’s coffers. They’re bad. They impose on the game-watching experience in a way I cannot abide. I am calling for a dump and change.
Look, Impossible Burgers are a perfectly fine sandwich: They taste like a light burger, you can dress them in various ways, I like a fried egg on mine sometimes. I must object, however, to seeing a 30-foot-wide close-up of a plant-based burger patty plastered all over the half-wall.
The NHL viewing experience in 2022: You’re trying to follow the play, then this unwanted screensaver jolts away from the close-up and pans out to the whole sandwich. The word “IMPOSSIBLE” was painted in shouting capital letters in the rest of the available board space.
That’s as best I can describe one of the new virtual board ads, which are superimposed on the boards in each TV market’s broadcast. Those watching the Root Sports Seattle broadcast on Thursday, when the Kraken beat the Kings, might have seen the Impossible Burger ad; Those watching the Los Angeles feed would have seen something else.
Watching NHL games these days, you think a little too much about a local-market power semiconductor company, which … sigh … is the point.
Are we not advertised enough here?
They’re distracting. They’re disorienting. They’re bad for the casual fan, someone who might be trying to sort out the fastest team sport in the world. Watching an NHL game already demands a level of focus. Now imagine you’re following a player with the puck, wondering what he is going to do with it, and all of a sudden the Geico gecko pops up next to him.
In recent years, the league has dropped logos all over the neutral zone and corners of the rink, and they’re creeping onto helmets and jerseys. When these showed up, I tried to ignore them. But I couldn’t. They can make you go cross-eyed.
At this rate, we’re not far away from the boards being covered in betting lines, letting the consumer play the odds on any number of in-game situations. Which of these two players are going to win this puck battle? Scan the QR code to place your bet now!
I don’t need approximately 1/10th of the horizontal space on my TV shouting at me about which cellular network is “the one America relies on” while the Kraken are trying to protect a two-goal lead in the final minutes. This is a call the NHL should drop.
I’m not even going to knock the league for the obvious technical glitches in the ads — players being swallowed by rogue-wave board ads — because they’ve been amusing.
If I’m being generous: NHL, do your viewers a favor and wait for the technology to catch up with the game experience you should be offering as the best league in the world. These detract from it.
Matt Porter can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @mattyports.