If you watch enough baseball games on any regional sports network, you’ll start to get way too familiar with the commercials that run over and over and over, night after night after night. One company invariably buys up a bunch of inventory and after every inning, it seems, the same ad keeps appearing. For sure, this is true of YES and SNY, the Yankees’ and Mets’ RSNs.
Three years back, it was hair tonic ads featuring someone named Giuseppe Franco and “stars” like Gary Busey that YES viewers were treated to endlessly. “Hey, I’m Giuseppe Franco. I’m not putting my name on something that doesn’t work.” For such a scammy advertiser to get such play, there must be a lot of 40ish and 50ish guys falling for it.
Then YES upgraded to Ford’s Derek Jeter commercials, the ubiquitous “That Jeter, he’s got an Edge” phrase annoying fans as the Yankees closed out the old Stadium.
Last year didn’t have a “signature” ad that I can recall easily, but this year the Jeter Edge ads are back. But not just on YES.
I’ve seen the ads played a lot on SNY during Mets games. Now, if I were a Mets fan, I’d be chapped. If as a Yankee fan I saw David Wright sugar water ads over and over on YES, that would hardly ingratiate me towards that company.
I asked a couple of Mets fan friends at Foley’s the other night what they thought of it, as the commercial played on the screen above us, and while one agreed with me I was surprised to find that the other wasn’t too upset.