Uniquely American Football ...and the SuperBowl 2023 Clean Zone in Phoenix

FIRST -- This is Nuts!

from the clean-zone-defense dept

"We’re a tad early for our annual season in which we point out that the NFL likes to play make believe as to its trademark rights for the Super Bowl. You can go read through the history of our posts on the topic, but essentially the NFL seems to think that its trademark rights allow it to control more strictly any commercial operations’ mere mention that this game exists than it actually can. The First Amendment is a thing, you see, and trademarks cannot keep every business from mentioning any reference to the Super Bowl without the NFL’s permission. Certainly it can pick official sponsors and exert some control over whether businesses can suggest an association with the league or the game, but it cannot, for instance, tell a local bar that it can’t tweet out a special on drinks during the Super Bowl on game day.

But the NFL pretends otherwise. And it appears to have found a partner in the city of Phoenix for one of the most bonkers examples of government censorship and prior restraint I can recall. See, Phoenix has setup a “clean zone” within the city that requires anyone wanting to post any new signage to get approval for that from the city… and the NFL.

Property owners in Phoenix are objecting to a new downtown “Clean Zone” that requires them to get permission from city hall, the National Football League (NFL), and/or a private Super Bowl host committee in order to display temporary signage and advertisements in the run-up to the game. In October, the city passed a resolution creating its “Clean Zone” in downtown. Within that area, property owners are required to get a city permit for temporary signage as well as the approval of the NFL and/or the Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee.

“It’s a blanket prior restraint on speech,” says John Thorpe, an attorney with the free market Goldwater Institute. “There are no guidelines, no criteria they give for what the NFL or the [Arizona Super Bowl Host] Committee are allowed to base their decisions on.”

✓ Thorpe is exactly correct and there is zero chance any of this would survive litigation on First Amendment grounds. Notably, this resolution was passed so late in the game that there is potentially not enough time for litigation to even occur. The city has decided to so completely prostrate itself before the almighty NFL that it is giving the league veto power on any new signage that would go up from local businesses, which are ostensibly the city’s actual constituents.

Given that the NFL likes to play pretend with its rights, you can absolutely see where this is going. No signage that has anything mentioning the Super Bowl will be allowed by non-sponsors. Likely any references to the game by other name would also result in a complaint or rejection.

This. Is. Nuts. . .

✓ Thorpe has sent a letter to the city, but the city has already trotted out its bullshit talk-track that this is all about protecting local business owners as well as the NFL’s trademark rights.

The intent is “to protect local businesses from ‘ambush’ or ‘guerrilla’ marketing attempts during the event period,” according to a fact sheet on the Clean Zone.

At a Super Bowl small business workshop in November, a city staffer also said that the purpose was to protect consumers from “unlicensed merchandise” and official Super Bowl sponsors from unauthorized competition.

“The NFL sponsors are making a huge financial commitment to be one of those designated sponsors, and we need to provide that protection to those sponsors in the downtown area where a lot of the Super Bowl events are happening,” said the staffer.

“We really wanted the game to be played here!” is not a justification for a city law that blatantly violates the First Amendment in about as clear a manner as possible. For all signage speech to have to pass a permit process is about as clear cut as it gets.

✓✓ The open question is whether anyone can do anything about it before mid-January, when the law takes effect."

Filed Under: advertising, clean zone, free speech, phoenix, prior restraint, super bowl, trademark
Companies: nfl

The NFL says it wants to welcome more female fans, but the number of women viewers has gone down over the last eight years and the league’s reactions to recent sex scandals make a turnaround less likely.

"You’d think that Roger Goodell, the National Football League’s $64-million-a-year commissioner, might’ve been better prepared for the question.

It was no secret that the findings of the congressional investigation released December 8 were damning. Not only had team owner Daniel Snyder ignored and downplayed sexual misconduct by team executives for decades at the NFL’s Washington Commanders, but the league had actively helped him avoid accountability, according to the 79-page report. The results of the investigation went public the same week that quarterback Deshaun Watson returned from an 11-game suspension related to accusations of sexual misconduct from two dozen women. Watson denied the allegations, and settled lawsuits with most of the women. Then he signed the biggest fully guaranteed contract in NFL history.

Snyder, who disputed the findings and accused the Democrats behind the congressional investigation of playing politics, still owns the Commanders. Watson, now with the Cleveland Browns, is still slinging footballs on Sundays. If the NFL was trying to attract and keep female fans, as the league says is its goal, maybe this wasn’t the best way to do it.

In fact, NFL viewership by both men and women is down about 3% this season through Week 14 compared with 2021. The NFL hasn’t been able to grow its female TV viewership, whose eight-year high was 6.3 million in 2015. It’s on pace for 5.9 million this season, according to figures provided by the league.

Last week, at a press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Irving, Texas, standing behind a podium emblazoned with the NFL shield he’d all but sworn to protect, Goodell looked befuddled when asked about the decline in women watching.

“We’ll continue to make sure we invite women into our game, make sure they know they’re appreciated,” Goodell said. “This is a game that they all love, too. And they’ve been a big part of it. We continue our efforts with respect to getting more women involved, not just in our operation, but in our football operation, which I think is a really positive change.”

The NFL’s 2022 problem is reminiscent of its problem in 2014, when running back Ray Rice was caught on video delivering a knockout punch to the woman who was then his fiancee. (Rice hasn’t played since. He and his now wife, Janay, are expecting their second child.) It was also the year that former defensive lineman Greg Hardy was convicted of assaulting a woman. (Hardy’s conviction was later overturned after a financial settlement. He subsequently signed with the Dallas Cowboys.) Also in 2014, NFL cheerleaders sued the league, accusing teams of paying less than minimum wage. (Teams settled with the cheerleaders without admitting wrongdoing.)

While the loss of women fans isn’t a catastrophic tidal wave — and can’t be definitively blamed on what might be the worst year in the NFL’s checkered history of fraught attitudes toward women — it’s also a signal that the league, which has an all-time-high ten female team owners, nevertheless has yet to fully come clean about its priorities. That can lead to business losses, according to Tony Ponturo, a former Anheuser-Busch vice president of sports marketing.

“If you’re losing women, and you’re just being propped up by males, that will eventually catch up to you,” Ponturo told Forbes.

For the past eight years, the gender split in viewership has remained remarkably consistent, with women hovering between 34% and 36%, according to TV ratings furnished by the league. The NFL blamed this year’s loss of women fans on the move of Thursday night games to Amazon’s streaming service, where female viewership is 31%, from broadcast networks, where it’s 36%.

The importance of women to the NFL’s business model, and the success of its partnerships, is magnified when it comes to the Super Bowl, the most lucrative day on the calendar for the world’s most profitable sports league. The NFL says the percentage of women inches closer to 50% for the big game. As every fan knows, advertisers pay more for the Super Bowl, which typically draws an audience of 100 million, and advertisers love women because they tend to make the spending decisions for families.

NBCUniversal charged advertisers around $6.5 million for 30-second spots during the 2022 Super Bowl. The 2023 Super Bowl returns to Fox, and the network is reportedly seeking more than $7 million per spot. In 2020, the last time Fox aired the Super Bowl, the network sold more than $600 million worth of ads.

“The advertiser needs to look out for themselves,” Ponturo said. “Is there slow erosion coming from somewhere that you’re now overpaying for something that’s not there?”

Results of the congressional investigation underscore that the NFL still has a woman problem..." READ MORE

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23 December 2022