Hard to believe, but the World Cup begins one month from today. Bruce Arena made his roster announcement last week, but has already had to replace one of the players he chose when Frankie Hejduk tore his ACL. Chris Albright to the white courtesy phone, please. There's been a fair amount of coverage, but USA Today gets the gold star for this player-by-player breakdown of the roster. ESPN's Andrea Canales has also been busy, examining the effects of the US performance at the World Cup on MLS and profiling Landon Donovan (above).However, the biggest pre-World Cup hype machine award goes to Gatorade, who has put together this series of clips from the US's World Cup Qualifying run set to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." More importantly, they've shelled out to get this commercial on the networks during primetime. I've seen it on ESPN during Baseball Tonight and on CBS between 9 and 10 pm as I was flipping channels, which makes me happy. There have been a number of terrific soccer commercials over the past few years, but the problem is you only ever see them during soccer broadcasts, so they end up doing nothing more than preaching to the choir. By getting these images in front of the Average American, Gatorade is doing its part to raise awareness of the Nats during the buildup to the World Cup, and for being the only soccer sponsor in the country stepping up to the plate in that regard, I'll reward them by buying more Gatorade.
2 comments:
Did you see that ad during Lost? I can just see the baseball faithful growling in disgust of soccer using their anthem. Love it!
Sweet. Talk about a prime time slot.
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