Spider-Man 2 bases
In case you’ve missed it - and I almost did despite my baseball fanaticism - there’s a bit of a controversy going on right now in the MLB about Spider-Man. More specifically, the Spider-Man 2 movie and the advertising campaign that’s about to kick off in ballparks around the country. From June 11-13, fifteen major league clubs will be replacing their standard bags with some adorned with SM2 ads. And this has pissed some….a lot of people off. Some teams declined to be a part of the promotion entirely, while others, like the New York Yankees, have agreed to participate in an extremely limited capacity. Even Ralph Nader can’t help but chime in, saying “It’s gotten beyond grotesque,” Nader said. “The fans have to revolt here. Otherwise, they’ll be looking at advertisements between advertisements.” Even more annoying to baseball fans and professionals is the fact that the amount of money MLB is making on the deal - $3.6 million - isn’t anything to write home about, so there’s no true financial gain argument that will work.

While this sort of outage over a bit of advertising may seem kind of childish, remember, we all love an industry that thrives on petty bickering and insane fanboy rants. Glass houses, anyone?

UPDATE: BJ points out in the comment thread that the MLB has already canned the promotion due to negative feedback on the internet. Interesting, eh?

More news in the following links.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/06/entertainment/main615988.shtml

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/05/06/MNGRQ6G7S630.DTL

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/baseball/mlb/05/06/h2h.spidey2/?cnn=yes

http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/bal-sp.vecsey06may06,0,3231985.column?coll=bal-sports-columnists

http://news.google.com/news?q=spider-man+baseball&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&sa=N&tab=nn

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