Gimme all your Xango (all your hugs and kisses, too)
Sports and branding. What a prime example of unfettered corporate waste.
It is bad enough that Real Salt Lake has to hawk unregulated dietary aids that claim to cure cancer and HIV (take that scientific method and civil society!), but now the Utah Jazz get to play in the atrociously sounding and ethically despicable EnergySolutions Arena.
For those not on the cutting edge of waste dumping, EnergySolutions is responsible for all of the nation's nuclear waste ending up in Utah (all thanks to our very own state radiation chief who accepted over $600,000 in bribes from EnergySolution's former owner.)
If you tolerate this, your children will be next.
It is bad enough that Real Salt Lake has to hawk unregulated dietary aids that claim to cure cancer and HIV (take that scientific method and civil society!), but now the Utah Jazz get to play in the atrociously sounding and ethically despicable EnergySolutions Arena.
For those not on the cutting edge of waste dumping, EnergySolutions is responsible for all of the nation's nuclear waste ending up in Utah (all thanks to our very own state radiation chief who accepted over $600,000 in bribes from EnergySolution's former owner.)
If you tolerate this, your children will be next.
posted by d l wright at 11/27/2006 10:54:00 AM
15 Comments:
Wow... That's the first I've heard of it. I don't think the general public is going to mind all that much:
Exhibit A
Exhibit B
Exhibit C
Etc.
Ben, your first and third example represent individuals, not teams. The first link in my post helps to explicate the difference between a private individual and a civil institution.
As for Tyson, well, yeah that sucks pretty bad too.
And I think you misjudge the public. People are pretty resistant to their beloved stadiums being sold out to corporate interests. Nobody I knew ever called the White Sox stadium "U.S. Cellular Field."
No way... we should do with Nuclear Waste what we've been doing with it forever.
Also Logan... I can't say that I agree with you on the sponsorship thing. Professional sports are really suffering. I was just talking to someone the other day about how the team owners and the players don't make enough money for what they do. If we have to turn to nuclear waste companies to keep our team... I guess it's just the price we pay.
Mark talking to "someone" -- yeah, I believe that!
Terrell Owens has 25 million reasons to live. 37 of those are to dump nuclear waste in Utah.
Also, can we please talk more about how Xango cures HIV? And cancer?
Oh, Mangostein. What can't you do?
Oh, you're right, sorry:
Exhibit A
Exhibit B
Exhibit C
While I would certainly be the first person to agree with you that this is outrageously fucked up, I can't say that I'm surprised. If I got offended every time I saw some vile corporate subterfuge, I'd be...well...I guess I'd be a dirty hippy. The issue here, for me, is our culture of capitalism, not just one symptom or another.
Working for the man has made you soft Goldie.
Maybe, but the amount of time you've had to think about the world has made you even softer. Look at you, all caring about stuff and shit.
I may not have made this clear with my ironic/snide comment before, but I don't think this is a good example of what's wrong with capitalism and the world. It's just another business deal between two heartless corporations.
There seems to be an assumption that professional sports teams are wholesome, community-building entities. When, in reality, they are, and always have been, the epitome of capitalism. You have questionable owners paying questionable amounts of money to questionable people to play games of no consequence. And the public responds by passionately paying questionable amounts of money for tickets and merchandise.
Professional sports (with the extreme, passion and loyalty that accompanies it) are what you'd get if you commercialized religion. Well, commercialized religion more.
Amen®
i see where you're coming from mark, but i don't think you'd get the same reactions from religion unless you injected some head to head competition. like Gordan B. Hinckley and the 12 Apostles vs. Hasidic Rabbis of New Jersey in a televised battle for the souls Ms. Sonntag's class of 4th graders.
the way i see it the general public HAS to accept this because there's no alternative. at least those of us who like sports. are you gonna choose the baseball league that DOESN'T advertise as much? all we can do is write letters to the editor saying dumb Larry Miller and then still watch Jazz games if they're interesting.
NBA, MLB, NFL, even MLS are monopolies, but is there a way around that? would i be interested if all the best players played in different leagues? who knows, it kind of works for soccer in europe, but people still pay the most attention to the only league in their country, and then the Champions Cup or UEFA Championship. competing firms in the sports arena hardly makes sense, but that means that if i like sports and wanna watch sports i gotta put up with pretty much anything they throw at me.
don't even suggest college sports. they're even less wholesome.
I always liked this change of the guards in Houston:
before
after
(Minute Maid is, of course, a child of the Coca-Cola Company).
Then there's this classic example in Detroit, which is like naming a Central American soccer field United Fruit Company stadium.
And don't forget the back story: Delta Reports $88M Loss for October.
Suggested nicknames for Energy Solutions Arena:
Melta Center
Ground Zero
The Fallout Shelter
JazzMat Arena
Glow Dome
Waste Place
The Dump
Radium Stadium
ChernoBowl
The Tox Box
Energy Pollutions Arena
The Dump is my personal favorite mostly because of its simplicity. "Goin' to the dump." or on Trax cars. "Next stop - dump." But I kinda like Melta Center too.
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