If you hoped to avoid politics by watching some baseball and football over the next four months, you’re kind of screwed:
ESPN will kick off an effort to allow more political ads on college and NFL football programs in October and November, according to a report.
The sports network signed on with NCC Media LLC, an ad-sales venture, to sell a larger portion of its advertising time to political campaigns, The Wall Street Journal said. The network is selling NCC advertising inventory that the network would have normally sold to national advertisers for the fall.
Ed Hardt, ESPN’s president of global customer marketing and sales, told the newspaper that there is “great demand” for political advertising from “political parties and the super PACs.”
Thus, in the crucial two months before the November election, viewers can expect their shotgun formations and weak-side blitzes to be occasionally peppered with pitches for Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, among other candidates.
It’s hard to blame ESPN for going this route given the volume of political ads we’re likely to see from campaigns, SuperPACs, and other third party groups over the next four months. Still, is nothing sacred?
