From the HERE City National Desk
NEW YORK — Steamy commercials running between innings of the Major League Baseball playoffs have turned into one of the postseason’s louder side debates, with viewers and at least one player asking why the spots are on family broadcasts at all.
Two campaigns draw most of the heat. Actress Sydney Sweeney appears in a series of barely clothed Just Sports ads for Novig, a sports prediction market, and Megan Fox stars in spots for a male enhancement product sold by Ro. Dodgers outfielder Alex Call, who was left off the club’s playoff roster, publicly asked the league and its TV partners to pull what he called soft porn from the broadcasts.
On paper, the league’s own advertising standards for baseball programming bar both sexual enhancement products and sports betting ads. The catch is an exception for content the league signs off on in writing in advance, along with room for an approved betting operator. Novig advertises itself as authorized by MLB.
Day-to-day decisions mostly rest with the networks. Two networks split this year’s televised postseason games, and one of them, Fox, signed an extension in 2018 that runs through 2028 at a reported $5.1 billion. The networks sell the commercial time, keep the ad revenue and pay the league a set fee, while lawyers for the advertiser or its agency vet spots before they ship. Last year the playoffs averaged nearly 4.5 million viewers at one point, the most since 2017.
Novig has shown no sign of backing off. It rolled out a second Sweeney spot in the same setting and style after female athletes criticized the first one, and the company reported that first-time depositors rose 361.8% and app downloads 260.9% after the campaign launched Sept. 9. Sweeney is an equity partner in the company and helped shape the creative direction.
Section: More Washington DC sports news
Filed under: Washington DC Sports News
