Team support, sponsorship deals, family – all is fair in love of sport
It seems that all sorts of allegiances are being stretched in the sporting world, with some, ok yes, quite tenuous, links to advertising.
Passengers "alighting" the tube at Vauxhall, the closest station to the Brit Oval where Surrey play their home cricket matches, are greeted by a large poster hawking membership to Middlesex cricket club. A tactic by a rival club not unlike phone operator 3’s guerrilla advertising around Dublin’s Croke Park before the O2 sponsored Six Nations Clash between Ireland and England in February – it used high-pressure hoses to clean 3 logos into the grub on the pavements.
But there is another potential split on the horizon with Liverpool FC’s UEFA Champions League semi-final against Chelsea on April 25 and leg two on May 1.
The scouse team will no doubt be relying on the skills of football’s own goal-getting extendible car aerial, Peter Crouch. However, Daddy Crouch, Bruce, co-founder and former managing director of ad agency Nitro, is a Chelsea season ticket holder. If you don’t know how big the dilemma facing Crouch Sr. is, ask a football fan then watch them screw up their face, wince and inhale audibly.
