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Title
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Celebrity Athletes and Sports Imagery in Advertising During NFL Telecasts
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Creator
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Hillard, Dan C.
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Hendley, Alexandra O.
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Date
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2014-09-09
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Date Available
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2014-09-09
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Date Issued
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2005
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uri
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https://collections.southwestern.edu/s/suscholar/item/43
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Abstract
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In this paper we investigate the contribution of advertising to “the sports-media-commercial
complex” (Messner, Darnell and Hunt, 2000:391) through content analysis of
a set of 1525 commercial messages contained in a sample of 15 National Football League
games from the 2003 season. Games were sampled across four networks and throughout
the regular season and playoffs (excluding the Super Bowl). We focus particular
attention on ads utilizing a sports setting, employing sports imagery (either visual or
verbal), or including a celebrity athlete. Approximately 21% of ads in the data set used a
sports setting in a significant way, while nearly 30% employed sport imagery; however,
only slightly over 10% of the ads included a celebrity athlete. A simple but significant
finding of the research is that sports settings, imagery and celebrity are frequently used to
advertise sport itself – future sports telecasts, sports clothing, sports video games, and
even public service announcements that serve as public relations for the NFL. We
discuss in detail the way sports settings, imagery and celebrity are used to advertise non-sports
products. We consider how gender and race are connected to sport in these ads,
and drawing on our analysis we speculate about the relationships among advertising,
sport, and American culture.
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Language
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English
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Relation
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Brown Working Papers in the Arts and Sciences;2005, no. 5
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Subject
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Sports-media-commercial complex
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Advertising
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Sport
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American culture
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National Football League
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Celebrity athletes
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Type
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Working Paper
