The NBA has had peculiar sponsors now and then. When you're not the NFL, you're sort of in the position to take whoever has the money. This isn't to say the NBA or its broadcasters lower standards -- not by any means. There's just some fairly frequent dissonance in the advertising message when juxtaposed to NBA basketball.Nowhere is that more blatant than with TNT's new in-game sponsor, World of Warcraft. WoW, as you surely know, is a massively multi-player online role-playing game. Pardon the simplification, but basically you create a midget mage or a half-cow knight and run around doing quests and killing dragons and stuff. According to a source close to this blogger, it takes a massive amount of playing time to keep up. It is an immersive undertaking, rather dominating of someone's free time.
And frankly, the target audience does not seem to match that of the NBA playoffs.
But WoW sponsors the "strategy points" offered for each team by Mike Fratello or Hubie Brown or P.J. Carlesimo. As in, WoW's maker Blizzard thinks the NBA fan community is rife with potential paladins and barbarians. I conducted several informal interviews to determine whether this is smart marketing for WoW. Do WoW fans and NBA fans share any common ground? Can we expect an influx of elven healers with names like "Chosen1LBJ" or "KOBE24KOBE"?
No. No, I don't think so. In fact, I think this sponsorship has very limited potential.
Perhaps the benefit for Blizzard comes in merely reminding noted Heroes of Azeroth Andrei Kirilenko and Channing Frye that, should their postseasons end swiftly, they will have the World of Warcraft to sweep away their troubles.
Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Wait, so, what is your reasoning again regarding the supposed incompatibility between WoW and NBA? Because I didn't see any. As far as I can tell WoW's target demographic is probably young men between the age of 15-35, a demographic that I assume is also a majority share of the NBA fandom world wide. The only thing the sponsorship shows is that video games and MMORPGs has definitively gone mainstream.
Just some anecdotal evidence, but for what it's worth, I play WoW a decent amount and am a NBA fan. There's actually a lot of chatting about NBA and NHL playoff games-in-progress while I'm online these days, too. There may be more fans of both than you think.
I play WoW and I am an NBA Fan too. When games are on ESPN, TNT, or Fox SW... I am watching them... not playing WoW.
WoW does have the ability to eat up all your time if you let it (basically if you have an addictive personality then you will spend way to much time playing because you are addicted. But if you don't then WoW is also set up to where you can get some stuff done in a short amount of time.
So the part "it takes a massive amount of playing time to keep up" isn't entirely accurate.
Great charts as always, love them.
There are probably a lot of people watching the NBA playoffs who would be interested in WoW. young males who like competition and spend their time indoors = marketing bonanza.
instead of doing game previews with NBA Live, I want to see the Los Angeles Orc-Mages vs. the Utah Elvish Flutes.
All I know is Charles sucks. Get him out..
The NBA is very popular among kids and younger people in general, so video games and NBA match pretty well.
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