Ubiquitous Adhesives Answer to Attendence Woes
Tim Ball
Monday June 10, 2002
Then why don’t you? I mean, where are all of the stickers and T-shirts proudly proclaiming Arena Football?
Arena Football has a fantastic logo, has perfect slogans -- “Don’t Blink,” “Get it all,” “50-yard Indoor War” -- and delivers on a promise. If 10,000 people see a game, why don’t the cars in the parking lot reflect this?
In Buffalo, the SaberCats and Destroyers were watched by only 6,714 fans. Not a very impressive number unless you think about 6,714 advertisements going in 6,714 different directions, being seen by thousands and thousands of people over the course of just weeks … ads that don’t disappear the next day.
Promotions should be more farsighted, serving the future, not just today’s game. Do newspaper ads pay dividends? Not if they don’t fill seats. An empty seat at an Arena Football game is a loss that should be fought at all “costs.” Yesterday’s news means no one cares anymore…
Multiply the numbers of real fans at every game and you have exposure to millions and millions of people who will see their cars and read the backs of their shirts everywhere they go… Those cars, right now, are silent about Arena Football.
The cost of one full-page color ad in a major newspaper could remedy that situation pronto!
I tell everyone I can about the wonders of Arena Football but to continue paying a licensed vendor $20.00 for a t-shirt at every game is asking a lot of any fan and how many visa applications can one person fill out?
I’ll keep buying Arena stuff but that does not help in spreading the word or filling seats. The cute little SaberCat toy I bought for my kids, (alright and me too), disappeared in their mountain of toys… well, like yesterday’s news.
I know many fans that would plaster their love of Arena Football anywhere they could. Why shouldn’t they be given this opportunity be the league?
Stickers Are Us
Surfers and skateboarders have gone from sleeping in their cars to owning beachfront property with nothing more than a trunk-load of clothes and a hand full of stickers responsible for their rise to wealth.
In the seventies and eighties in Southern California, virtually every car had two little feet or a yellow hand on their back window. No discussion was needed for identity of the drivers’ favorite sport. Both Hang Ten and Body Glove are worldwide companies that made millions from this concept.
When you see a rainbow apple with a chunk bitten out of it, the person in that car is telling IBM something without the use of a middle finger. Do you think Steve Jobs worries about rent?
“Raider Nation” is literally that. Everywhere in America you can see cars with a helmet-wearing skull and crossbones in the back window. This person may live in Genoa, Illinois, but his heart (and wallet) dwell in the Oakland Coliseum.
Every kid in America speaks through his stickers and t-shirts. Look at any bike or skateboard and at every t-shirt on any one of them. What they like and more importantly what they want YOU to like is on that shirt. The X-games were a response to massive numbers of youth already numbering in the millions before one televised event. Tony Hawk was on a million shirts and stickers before he was ever on ESPN.
And what do you think a “rainbow tailed peacock” might signify for Arena Football?
NBC Nothing But Common… sense
NBC is not the cure, far from it. So don’t just expect a big TV network to make Arena Football a household word. You need neighbors for that. If stickers and t-shirts can help elect a president or decide the deepest issues in society today, think what they can do for Arena Football!
NBC needs our help as much as we need theirs. “Get out the vote,” means making sure NBC has a hit on their hands with Arena Football.
Call the commissioner’s office and suggest the things I’ve written here. Two little things that have launched ventures for so many (people and companies), who have given far less than Arena Football has already given to so many.
At every game someone should be handing out a sticker of the Arena Football Logo. Every game at every arena should be on a t-shirt. When have the ads in major newspapers paid off? The bottom of a birdcage is no place for the best sporting event in the country to be advertised!
Tim Ball is a writer in the Chicagoland area. Married and father of three, his opinions on Arena Football reflects the positive aspect of the game as a family event second to none in pro sports.
