Sports Without Advertising

In the 1967 film “Bedazzled,” Peter Cook, as the devil, laments that he hasn’t done anything really evil since he introduced advertising into the world. That got me wondering about where sports would be without advertising. I once posed that question to a number of notable sports figures. Here is a compilation of their responses.

“Never in my life have I thought about that question,” said Roy Spence, the founder and president of GSD&M, the advertising agency responsible for the memorable “Don’t mess with Texas” public service ad and Southwest Airlines’ “You’re now free to move about the country” tag. “But I would say that sports would always be sports. You’re going to have people competing against each other, whether it’s here or around the world, at any level at any time, whether it’s marbles or hopscotch. Advertising has made sports a lifestyle. It’s allowed sports to reach the masses, for good or bad. In the end, I think advertising is a good thing for sports.”

Donald Dell, the founder and chairman of ProServ, said in 2004, “That’s the important question. To me, all pro sports are really a product of two things: television and sponsorships. What does a tennis tour take to be successful?

     “Well, first, it takes good players. Good players get you television. Television gets you sponsorships. At the end of the day, if you’re going to be playing for these big purses, it’s never done at the gate receipts. So sponsorships and television are what make the world of pro sports go ’round. Certainly in tennis….

     “[Tennis and golf are] individual sports. And they are a direct product of sponsorships. If you’re going to sponsor something, you want to make darn sure it’s televised. If there’s no television, you’re not going to increase your sponsorship. If the sponsorship doesn’t increase, the purses don’t increase.”

“That’s a chicken-or-egg question,” said Pam Gardner, president of the Houston Astros. “It’s necessary. We have to have [advertising]. It’s part of our livelihood. As I said before, baseball used to just be a sport, but it’s a sport that’s become big business, and so baseball probably wouldn’t be without advertising.”

“That’s a good question,” said Jerry Colangelo, president of USA Basketball. “I guess we create many things, and some things are created for us. And the fact is, once sponsors identify a market that sports brought to them, that was a market to buy their product, they had to reach that audience. And therefore a whole new business evolved in terms of sponsorships and advertising partners, and it continued to grow into naming rights and major all-encompassing types of packages. It became very unique.”

“[Sports] would be a little less well off [without advertising],” said John Walsh, executive vice president and executive editor of ESPN Inc. “People would make a little less money. I don’t know. Advertising at its best inspires creativity. Advertising at its worst gets in the way of doing your job.”