T & T Pack Marketing Wallop At SB LVIII; NHL All Stars Just Pack It In

News Item: Cosmetics companies paying top dollar as first-time Super Bowl advertisers hoping to exploit the Taylor Swift/ Travis Kelce shag-a-thon.

Goes to show you never can tell. Into an orderly NFL season a marketing phenomenon has dropped. The celebrated romance between godlike songstress Taylor Swift and her goofy tight-end boyfriend Travis Kielce of the Kansas City Chiefs has re-written our understanding of global marketing. 

The hook-up between the two has played out in freeze-frames from Chiefs games as she wildly cheered his exploits from a luxury box (in the company of the daffy wife of Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes) while he lumbered into the end zone trailing broken opponents in his wake. The background sound was cash registers toting up the millions. 

Kelce is no stranger to marketing his image. He’s already worth an estimated US$40 million, and has added over $20 million through endorsement deals and partnerships with his inescapable portfolio. In addition to participation in the Swiftie brand he’s also flogging State Farm Insurance, Campbell's Soup, DirecTV, Experian, Lowe's, and Nike. 

Sadly for Pfizer his grinning countenance getting the Covid vaccine has done nothing to convince fans to take their voodoo juice. Nonetheless his marketing pals speak of him becoming a global brand after leveraging the Swift relationship.

As we head to this weekend’s Super Bowl, a demographic that doesn’t know a touchdown from a touch-up will be closely following Swift’s travels over a 72-hour span as he she exits a concert in Japan, flies across the Pacific to Las Vegas, site of the Super Bowl, to see Kielce play and then depart for her next concert in Brisbane Australia. (Points deducted if you mention carbon footprints,) 

For the NFL, which has been a happy bystander to the romance, it has been a fortuitous marketing coup, marrying the half of society who watch the SB every February with the other half that watch Hallmark movies on that same Sunday. Is the romance real? Will she spin him off in song as she has other love interests? Is he going to be a cad?

No one knows as yet. But stay tuned. Or bet the predominant colour of Swift's top at opening kickoff; red is, of course, the favourite at -300, with white (+250), black (+1000), yellow (+3000) and any other colour (+2400).

You can be sure every professional sports league is watching and will try. And try. And try to catch this romance lightning in a bottle..

Then there’s the NHL All Star snoozer where marketing went to die. Already hobbled by news that four if its players are answering charges of sexual assault in London Ont. on Monday, the NHL tried a distraction strategy. First, it leaked news that a league already bloated with teams will add Salt Lake City to the logjam of mediocrity in 2028.

Then it announced—hurray!— that it will return to the Olympics in 2026 and 2030. (Presuming the U.S. and Russia won’t be at war.) Don’t ask why the marketing geniuses have not been at the Olympics since 2014. Just be glad that they’re going back, says superstar Sidney Crosby, the most earnest and charisma-deficient star in the league.

Then, it spun away from the scandal with its annual All Star practice and scrimmage. Trying its hand at marrying pucks and glitz in Toronto in the face of the Sift/ Kelce story was never going to be a fair fight. First they are dealing with a workforce that employs the Nuke LaLoosh School of clichés. Second. Wait, there is no second.

Sportsnet TV producers who forgot that the Germans are not the souls of wit in a second language stretched interviews with Leon Draisaitl into ponderous dead air. Glassy-eyed hockey stars like Nathan Mackinnon and Cale Maker burbled about “the guys”, a “team effort” and “just happy to be here” when they plainly would rather be in Cabo with their teammates for the holiday weekend.

Give him credit; Tampa’s tempestuous star Nikita Kucherov didn’t even try to disguise his ennui at practising shooting drills while his Lightning pals were downing shooters on a beach in the Caribbean. The hockey sweats in Toronto lustily booed him for refusing to go along. Even for million-dollar incentives to the guys who thought Connor McDavid wasn’t going to snatch all the prize money anyhow. 

The problem in the NHL is not All Star formats. It is tongue-tied players married to a head office that badly needs a re-think. (Translation: Gary Bettman has to go.) There’s not much that you can do with players inoculated with (in Roy MacGregor’s lovely phrase) the “humility gene”.  The American-born players seem to have an idea of show biz, but the Canadians are universally self effacing and restrained in their public utterances. And the Euros look on bewildered.

There was hope for a league charisma transplant when Wayne Gretzky married starlet Janet Jones and headed to LA in 1988. But even that hopeful marketing candle blew out long ago, because it was found that the shy Gretzky has 99 ways of saying nothing of interest. 

If that prescription isn’t enough the weekend was saturated by Rogers’ hype so cloying and obsequious that only a 12-year-old was entertained. The hosts gushed over the latest skills format, lauded Connor McDavid for consulting on the format and generally acted as if someone actually cared about the Toronto hype. The banter on the desk was strained, to say there least. There are book clubs with more animated conversation.

As we say, none of this will matter till Bettman lets someone other than him push the business away from endless expansions and toward global reach. After all, there’s going to be an opening soon when Taylor bids adios to Travis in song. The right message from the right sport could just find a market. 

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.